Caledonian Sleeper

In July 2015 NCB was contracted by Serco to assess a new 75 vehicle fleet, comprising of 5 different vehicle types. These 75 vehicles represent the first procurement of new coaching stock in the UK for 30 years and they will be the first to be certified under the Railway (interoperability) Regulations 2011.

NCB acted as a Notified Body and Designated Body to assure that the design and construction of the vehicles met the technical subsystem requirements of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability – primarily the ‘Rolling Stock – Locomotive and Passenger Rolling Stock’ Commission Regulation (EU) No 1302/2014. NCB also acted as the Assessment Body to review compliance to the Common Safety Methods for Risk Evaluation and Assessment (CSM-RA) Commission Regulation (EC) No 402/2013.

On this project we worked closely with CAF and together we generated an interactive ‘Conformance matrix’ which lists the standards that had to be conformed to. This matrix helped both NCB and CAF identify and record the progress of the project as each design package was submitted and then reviewed.

The project went well and we constantly monitored and adapted to accommodate any changes required by CAF to the design and delivery timescales.

We also worked with CAF to witness the identification of hazards associated with the project and assessed the conformance to the CSM-RA, which ultimately led to a Safety Assessment Report (SAR) being issued.

On completion of the conformance assessment we issued the completed Technical File to the client on 4th October, which they will now submit to the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) to gain authorisation for the new fleet to enter service in early 2019.