Although it hasn't exactly happened
the way it was planned, anyone who has been following the Williams Review has
expected that major changes were coming in the way passenger rail is operated
in Great Britain.
The COVID-19 pandemic could have sent the
rail sector into a tailspin from which it might not have recovered, had the
government not suspended rail franchise agreements and assumed financial risk
in March.
As a result, the Office for National
Statistics (ONS) declared that the sector has effectively been renationalised,
and in September the government chose to permanently end the franchising
system, using a new Emergency Recovery Measures Agreement (ERMA) contract
structure to manage the train operators for the next 18 months, with a view to
implementing the Williams Review's recommendations when normal times resume.
Although that white paper has still not
been published, it is widely anticipated to propose a move toward London
Overground- and Merseyrail-style concession contracts for operators, with a new
independent ‘guiding mind’ for the rail network assuming the financial risk,
taking the lead on an overall coordinated strategy and contracting operators
directly against performance targets for efficiency and passenger service.
Most rail engineering work assumes
decades-long life cycles for the assets it produces and maintains, and the
ability of engineering to respond directly to the present crisis in the rail
industry is of course limited. But the
structural changes we are seeing in the industry now, or something like them,
are going to persist for decades to come. Engineering, like every other aspect of the
rail industry, is going to have to account for this new reality in planning its
way out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The impact of a change in the
passenger-facing operating model might seem to have only rather abstract
implications for engineering, but as the stakeholders change, so too will the
requirements. Future rail engineering
will have to adapt to a different set of priorities, both with respect to the
greater degree of central coordination applied to the rail network, and with
respect to the changed incentive structure of the operating companies.
Rail engineering has been dealing with
increasing system complexity for some time, from projects like the Digital
Railway, as well as greater pressure from stakeholders on safety, accessibility
and decarbonisation. But with this faster-than-expected
transition to greater central coordination for the network, these pressures for
greater complexity will both accelerate and change in character.
Rail systems will need to collaborate
better, as rail strategy becomes directed from the centre and more focused on
the integrated performance of the network as a whole. And even insofar as parts of the rail network
can be treated as independent systems, more direct incentives on operators to
improve efficiency and passenger service will doubtless also translate into
more demanding requirements for engineers.
Systems engineering has already become an
important tool for certain parts of the Great British (GB) rail network and has,
in the last decade, been fully embraced by infrastructure owners like Network
Rail and Transport for London (TfL) as a critical component of the
sophisticated engineering necessary to deliver a more complex, interconnected
and digital rail system. Even before
these major structural changes to the industry, rail suppliers were starting to
wake up to the idea that participating in systems engineering processes with
those major contractors could help them work more closely with their
stakeholders and deliver better, more complex systems, that integrate more closely
with the broader understanding of the network and its systems.
With this accelerated transition to
requirements being driven from the centre, suppliers will accordingly need to
step-up their transition to a more integrated approach to engineering. Systems engineering techniques are
fundamentally about finding ways to analyse, model and plan the behaviour of a
system as a whole and in its context, above and beyond the details of
individual components. By having a suite
of processes and tools designed to model and anticipate the structure of a system, projects can have
assurance from the start that the right asset is being built in the right way,
and that the project will interact appropriately with its context.
Systems engineering has developed a wide
range of processes and tools for modelling and simulation, requirements
analysis, scheduling, and all parts of the life cycle, tailored to better
manage the development of complex systems. In particular, systems engineering takes a
robust and scientific approach to requirements management that cleanly and
specifically identifies ambiguities and gaps in stated stakeholder needs.
The requirements that result are – among
other benefits – clear, verifiable, functional, minimal and consistent. And, critically, they are managed using tools
which can integrate those requirements across every part of the network, with
seamless supplier collaboration and the ability to see in requirements and
models, how any given system is expected to interface with the network around
it.
As the rail operating model changes, more
requirements will be ultimately derived from the central coordinating body, and
more of what is expected of rail systems will require seamless, integrated
coordination with the network around it. Stepping up progress toward systems
engineering use could be the right way to engineer the railway out of this
crisis, and beyond, to the challenges of the future.
If you have found this article
useful, and would like to hear more about how your organisation may use systems
engineering to better embrace change, visit www.synthesys-technologies.co.uk
or contact us on cet@synthesys.co.uk
