Newsletter No. 1 – May 2019

Welcome to the first AssessTech Newsletter.

These newsletters will be coming periodically with news relating to ACMS, AssessBook, AssessTube and anything else that is happening at AssessTech.

ACMS 5.1 is Going Live!

We are releasing ACMS 5.1 to all Android customers this month. This release includes some significant new features in addition to our usual bug fixes. Included in this release are:

  • Configurable Resources
  • Bulletin Module
  • Check Module
  • A new, improved aAssess App for Android

Unfortunately our iOS customers still need to wait for ACMS 5.1 because the development and testing of the new aAssess App isn’t quite complete, but watch this space!

Configurable Resources

This new feature allows you to capture capability against a configurable list of “things” (e.g. Engineering Tasks, Management Capabilities or Training courses) for each Role. So this will no longer be constrained to just Routes, Traction and Locations.

There are also new user stories for the tracking the signing of these either by managers or by the candidates themselves. 

Bulletin Module

Originally demonstrated at our last User Forum, this is now ready to go. It includes the aBulletin app for tablets and phones.

Bulletin is a separate ACMS module, so please contact us if you would like a quote or demo.

Check Module

This release also includes an initial release of the new Check module, with the ability to perform Fitness for Duty checks. Custom checks will be coming for the Check module in the next release.

New, Improved aAssess for Android

Now there is a separate Assessment Planning screen so that Assessors can see assessment information about themselves and/or their teams, helping them to keep on top of their workload.

There’s a lot going on at AssessTech apart from ACMS V5.1 – here’s a round up of the rest…

Outlook for ACMS

Looking forward to next version of ACMS, we are focusing on:

  • aAssess, aBulletin and aCheck for iOS
  • Custom checks for the Check Module that will allow for ‘mini-questionaires’ to set-up checks, for thing like fatigue, safety briefings or booking on.
  • A Form Builder capability to allow capture of other data such as hours completed against tasks, process measurements or data about a safety check – in fact anything you can think of that doesn’t fit anywhere else on ACMS.

AssessBook New Theme

Also demonstrated at the User Forum, the new theme has now been rolled out to all of our current AssessBook customers.

Training

The Incident Recovery Kit has now entered production and is being used by several TOCs. We are currently working on a how-to-play video to aid with teaching the game.

In Other News…

We have now become members of the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB); read all about it on our website blog.

We are delighted to have been awarded the Best Railway Technology and Training Consultancy in the 2019 Transport Awards, organised by SME News. Read the complete Blog article here.

We are speaking about Developmental Competence Management for Light Railway at the EU Light Rail Conference in Brussels on 16th & 17th May. Come and say hello if you are planning on attending.

And we’ve updated our TOLO and SIO courses to include the kit – gamification is something we believe helps people stay engaged with training and reinforces learning.

With that in mind, work has begun on our second board game, Accident & Incident Investigation. This is still in the prototype stage, so more news to follow.

And finally… Brock has become a qualified Assessor in addition to his recently completed Instructor Award and will now be delivering some of our Assessor courses.

Congratulations to Brock on his achievements.