Tracer by Kontinuity
Real-time test records and fault diagnosis for safety-critical railway commissioning. Built by a signalling engineer — for the engineers doing the work.
Request a demoEvery test has a procedure. Every result must be recorded. Every failure must be logged, investigated, resolved, and documented before a system is signed off. The audit trail is what proves the work was done correctly — not the engineer's recollection.
In practice, that audit trail is often a ring binder, a spreadsheet updated at the end of the day, and whatever the engineer on shift can remember clearly enough to write down after ten hours on the tools.
Nobody has built something better — because the people who understand the problem well enough to build the right tool are the ones on the vehicles, not writing software.
Tracer is built by someone who has been both.
Tracer is a real-time test record tool for safety-critical commissioning. Two modules — one for fault diagnosis in maintenance, one for structured commissioning programmes.
Tracer Maintain
Guided fault finding for relay circuits — ETCS, CBTC, relay-based systems. Step-by-step procedure on phone or tablet. Tap any component to start fault finding from that point. Navigate bidirectionally between relays and contacts. Every session is recorded: engineer, circuit, steps, outcome, severity — timestamped and stored.
Tracer Test
Structured test execution with workflow enforced by the system. Role conflict prevention — an engineer cannot analyse or sign off a session they contributed steps to. TIC signs off with PIN. Timestamp written at that moment. Cannot be backdated. Certificates, site reports, and test logs produced automatically from the session record.
Tracer is designed around how railway commissioning actually works — not how it looks from a project management desk.
Progressive Web App — load once and it works regardless of signal. Depots, tunnels, vehicles mid-test. A tool that needs a live connection fails at exactly the wrong moment. Tracer doesn't.
The system prevents role conflicts — not a policy reminder, a hard system constraint. Tester, Analyst, TIC. Sign-off is PIN-authenticated and timestamped at the moment it happens.
The commissioning dashboard builds itself from session records in real time. The TIC doesn't maintain a tracker because the tracker maintains itself. The PM doesn't call for a progress update because the progress is already visible.
For fully air-gapped environments — export a self-contained offline file, work through the session, merge back into the main record when in range. Three execution modes: fully online, fully offline, split.
Test certificates, site reports, test logs — produced from the session record. Not compiled from end-of-shift notes. The record is built as the work is done.
Session records exportable for upload to asset management platforms — Maximo or equivalent. The record is there when the programme manager asks about a fault six months later.
The fault diagnosis module has an MVP. The commissioning module is in active development.
Neither has been tested on a live project yet. The development is being done alongside active signalling work — which is exactly why the design decisions reflect what the work actually involves. The role conflict enforcement, the state machine that cannot be skipped, the block tracking with mandatory duration — these came from being in the environment, not modelling it from the outside.
If you work in railway T&C, M&E, or safety-critical commissioning and want to be involved in early testing, get in touch.
Kontinuity is founded by James Sefton — an IRSE-licensed signalling engineer with experience across ETCS, CBTC, and relay-based systems on major programmes in the UK.
Tracer exists because the people who understand railway testing well enough to build the right tool are the ones on the vehicles. Kontinuity is the attempt to close that gap.
The primary audience is railway testers and commissioning engineers. The secondary audience is M&E, utilities, and any industry where test and commissioning of safety-critical electrical systems leaves a paper trail that nobody is proud of.
Early access, feedback, or just want to talk about the problem — get in touch.