Railway infrastructure portfolio management in the UK

Abstract

Six months into its 2014 Railway Upgrade Plan, Anglia Route (UK) was forecasting a shortfall in outputs. A review identified that the delivery plan had not been tested robustly enough for deliverability. The two key root causes were identified as (a) some inertia between the publication of its Strategic Business Plan in January 2013 and the beginning of its Railway Upgrade Plan in April 2014 and (b) the lack of understanding of the key delivery levers and their interdependencies. The solution developed followed two key objectives: (a) a focus on maintaining and renewing the railway to deliver a safe, reliable and sustainable network to the end users (b) without unnecessarily reinventing the wheel. Between 2013/2014 and 2016/2017, Anglia Route increased its capital expenditure delivery from £250 million to £624 million with no negative impact on train delays. This approach has promoted better communication in the organisation and more control and oversight in delivery.

An alternative approach to railway asset management value analysis: application to a UK railway corridor

“…A value framework defines the measurement points that are important to the organisation and in delivering the company's organisational objectives (Boers, 2019). A metric similar to the one in the paper can be seen in value frameworks across industries, including the health care sector (NHS, 2017), nuclear industry (NDA, 2016) and transport industry (Mihai, 2019), as well as in the rail industry (Algaard and Lines, 2020;Papathanasiou et al, 2020;Rangarajan et al, 2013). Within a value framework, typically all metrics are converted onto a common scale.…”