LONDON — Hitachi Rail will acquire digital rail monitoring business Omnicom from infrastructure firm Balfour Beatty, the companies announced on Friday, Jan. 17.
The newly acquired business will become a key part of Hitachi Rail’s digital asset management business, HMAX.
Omnicom produces hardware and software for surveying, inspecting, and monitoring rail infrastructure, including gauge clearance measurement, line visual inspection and scanning infrastructure. Its monitoring systems, which can be installed on rolling stock, use edge computing and machine learning to provide near real-time track detection.
Omnicom’s products will feed into the HMAX suite, which integrates data from trains and infrastructure into a single platform.
“This is a strategic acquisition for Hitachi Rail,” Giuseppe Marino, Hitachi Rail CEO, said in a press release. “Plugging Omnicom’s pioneering track monitoring tools into our digital asset management platform will further strengthen our global offer to optimize customers’ rail services and the surrounding infrastructure.” Said Sanjay Razdan, Omnicom managing director, “This acquisition strengthens Omnicom’s ability to collaborate, innovate and deliver AI-enabled systems and services whilst further enhancing the safety, efficiency, and reliability of rail infrastructure, building on our proven data driven solutions which help predict and prevent railway asset failures”
London-based Omincom, which evolved from four British rail engineering companies, was founded in 1998. Terms of the transaction were not announced.
