Safety Case

The ‘Verwaltungsvorschrift für die Genehmigung zur Inbetriebnahme von Eisenbahnfahrzeugen’ (Administrative Regulation on Authorising the Commissioning of Railway Vehicles) or VV IBG in short, was introduced by the German Federal Rail Authority on 15 March 2010. The VV IBG poses challenges to rail vehicle manufacturers and suppliers alike. The CENELEC EH5012x standards series is a component thereof.

Consequential implementation on the part of manufacturers has not occurred so far. New methods and approaches that are pursuant to the VV IBG therefore have to be developed. In developing methods and approaches, manufacturers and suppliers can rely on the experience of InterEngineer.

The VV IBG demands a precise definition of an explicitly demonstrable proof plan, which has been drawn up by InterEngineer in collaboration with rail vehicle manufacturers.

Moreover, in accordance with the authorisation regulation, an additional specialist field was informed for authorisation: specialist field 13 – Software and Functional Safety. InterEngineer has been able to profit from its experience in previous projects in the creation of the corresponding dossiers, and elaborate them together with the functional assessor and the respective manufacturer. A successful concept here is supporting the manufacturer in test and validation trials, which were in part also carried out together with the functional assessor.

Thanks to the early integration and close collaboration with the functional assessor by InterEngineer, the elaboration of functional verification could be performed within a reasonable timeframe and with high quality.

A further decisive contribution to the success of the project was to bring together all those employees involved in the approval process in such a way that everyone has the same level of understanding (what, when and why). Active information exchange was put in place by InterEngineer to guarantee open communication between all participating employees. To support communication, our MtS (Meet the Standard) application was made available to all employees. This application enables the work steps required in a work package or document to be monitored.