SAFTInspect system will improve levels of safety for the railway industry and its customers, preventing 6-9% of the accidents. Rail operators, underground operators, rail maintenance service providers and manufacturers, will benefit from our SAFTInspect innovative device that will be used both in pre-service and in-service analysis:
Pre-service: SAFT Inspect will allow the manufacturer to control every asset produced and to offer a better service to its customers. No special infrastructure is required, no special skills from the user. No more inherently flawed frogs will be putted into service offering 100% of quality.
In-service: Full volumetric inspection not only is more effective (90%) than other competitive techniques but also is economically beneficial. We will reduce inspection time on service from 5 to 1 hour, reducing the total time per inspection (including the downtime) from 30 to 5 hours (85%). The savings on time are closely related to savings on labour costs, meaning a reduction of 94% from labour costs.
As preventive maintenance for avoiding rail derailments, we will inspect all the frogs of the railway and we will be able to detect the frogs with flaws or cracks for being replaced. We will eliminate the unnecessary cost of replacing frogs that are not damaged; this means savings in maintenance of the infrastructure of around €1.89M per year.
Cracks that occur during service will be detected at an early stage in their growth cycle (at least 3 months in advance in lines with heavy traffic), this will allow strategic monitoring and planning to be undertaken to manage the asset condition. From a global perspective, avoiding unscheduled maintenance, rail operators will save up to €87.5M in penalties in Europe from train delays.
Impact in the EU railway market: There is a pan-European desire to increase the speed and therefore the capacity of rail travel to make it more attractive to the general public. SAFTInspect will have wide industrial and commercial application not just in Europe but worldwide. Patenting the products and licensing for further exploitation will be inevitable to meet the demand for global sales. All revenue streams will plough back into Europe as it is the European SME Airtren that holds the IP ownership. Therefore the total economic impact of the project will result from inclusion of the SAFTInspect project benefits at European Level through international market penetration and transfer of technological development without the transfer of IP to regions outside the Europe. Besides, we will avoid the unnecessary replacement of frogs in a good state that currently, are being replaced as preventive maintenance, will detect manufacturing defects in the frogs and will save money to railway operators from penalties due to train delays.
Impact the society: SAFTInspect will impact in the society by adding safety and efficiency into rail transportation by reducing the delay of trains thanks to reducing the time required for inspection of rail crossings (85%), for increasing the efficiency (90%) of detecting internal flaws in the manganese steel railway crossings, and for avoiding 6-9% of accidents related to train derailment caused by frogs in poor state. Besides, we will reduce 5% the train delays caused by the inspection of frogs.
Impact to AIRTREN: As it will allow our SME Company to consolidate and expand its market in countries like Sweden, Mexico, UK or Poland, with a production of 81 SAFTInspect devices in 5 years. SAFTInspect will be highly profitable by 2023 with total revenues (cumulative) of €33,630,000 only from sales of the SAFTInspect device and a total profit (cumulative) of €12,464,000. Considering a total budget of €500,000 (already invested) + €1,615,820 (pending to invest), our Return of Investment by 2023 is 4.89 proving the profitability of our business model and consolidating Airtren as a leader in the railway inspection and maintenance industry.
