Track and Power Outage Planning Process Review

For a major commuter railroad, we were tasked to review the processes utilized in planning for, and resolving conflicts inherent in, track outages required for routine maintenance work and major capital projects.  The remit also included a review of software tools that could be utilized, scheduling techniques that could provide longer windows of outage opportunities, and benchmarking with other passenger rail operators to identify possible improvements.  We attended many track outage coordination meetings and concluded generally that existing processes were effective as long as participants had the necessary level of operations/construction knowledge, sufficient information about the (maintenance and capital) work to be accomplished, good understanding of their own resource requirements and availability, and properly communicate this information succinctly.  Although other rail operators utilized web-based software for more detailed advance planning or had a more regimented process that reduced possibilities of errors or misunderstandings, they also forfeit some flexibility our client had available in terms of responding to short-term changes of plan due to e.g. last minute resourcing or weather-related issues.  The scheduling rules for outage request/approvals, and base schedules when work was likely to occur, were written as to generally avoid having to issue a revised or special public timetable to accommodate any reasonably foreseeable work, which preserves operational flexibility for both maintenance work scope changes and in case of train delays due to incidents.  However, we recommended that special schedules should be issued to accommodate major projects, as to improve the bandwidth available for project work and reduce both the instances of outages required and overall project costs.  As a follow-up, we were tasked to review the power outage planning process within the context of accelerating a major investment programme; our findings were broadly similar, and their implementation resulted in faster rate of progress in the project.