Critical Infrastructure Backup Power Assurance Platform

A brief electricity interruption at Manchester Rail Operating Centre exposed how a failure in the transition from normal supply to resilient power can disable a safety-critical control environment and propagate disruption far beyond the site itself. The deeper problem is assurance: asset owners may know that UPS units, generators and alternate feeds exist, yet still lack a continuously updated, end-to-end view of whether the complete chain will carry the real operational load at the instant it is needed. In rail, a power loss safely drives signals to restrictive states, but that safe failure can still strand trains, reset control systems and create hours of network recovery work.

Network Rail routes and operating centres; rail infrastructure managers; airports; hospitals; water companies; telecoms operators; ports; data centres; emergency-service control rooms; local and central government teams responsible for critical national infrastructure.

Network Rail confirmed that an electricity supply outage affected Manchester ROC, the North West's main hub for controlling train movements. ORR had already identified gaps in resilient signalling backup-power arrangements and a systemic oversight gap, with assurance requested by September 2026. HSE guidance explicitly says backup systems should be tested end-to-end and that testing a diesel generator alone is insufficient without proving automatic start and switchgear operation.

Immediate regulatory pressure; a live high-profile failure; existing industry deployment of UPS for signalling; cross-sector government focus on CNI energy resilience; and a clear buyer group with high costs of downtime.

UPS, generator and building-management vendors already monitor individual assets, while engineering contractors perform periodic maintenance and testing. The gap is a cross-vendor operational assurance product that continuously proves the whole resilience chain and translates technical health into service-continuity risk.

A vendor-neutral resilience assurance platform that continuously answers: 'If mains power failed now, would this site keep operating?' It combines telemetry from grid feeds, UPS, batteries, generators, automatic transfer switches, distribution boards and critical applications into a live Resilience Readiness Score and auditable evidence trail.

Underserved score 92/100

Very strong unmet need and unusually direct evidence chain: a live nationally significant disruption, an existing ORR finding that the same class of signalling-power resilience problem may be systemic, a near-term regulatory assurance deadline, established technical guidance requiring end-to-end testing, identifiable enterprise buyers and a product that can extend well beyond rail. Score reduced slightly for procurement friction and safety-critical integration complexity.