INNOVATION & SUPPLY CHAIN
The need for the Stafford Area Improvements Programme
Against a backdrop of unprecedented passenger growth, the West Coast Main Line is set to reach capacity within the next five years. With little investment since the 1960s, the railway around Stafford (and in particular Norton Bridge), is a major constraint to capacity, causing congestion and delay on this key rail route.
The SAIP addresses this through three key rail projects – linespeed improvements between Crewe and Stafford (completed in March 2014); resignalling Stafford station and the sur- rounding area; the construction of six miles of new railway at Norton Bridge including a new flyover.
innovation schemes using the Alliance as a test-bed,” Ellwood explained. “RIA is currently organising an ‘Innovation
Intermediary’
scheme to scout and broker innovation as a service embedded within the Alliance team structure, whilst the RSSB FutureRailway group (more on page 38) recently completed a pilot training programme aimed at embedding innovation capability within the rail sector. The pilot equipped six individuals with the skills needed to identify and foster innovation within their existing roles on the Alliance.”
Innovation from other sectors
Ellwood continued: “Considerable efforts have also been made to identify products and services which can be introduced to the rail landscape from other sectors. Items such as GPS-based vehicle monitoring and the use of composites in structures and electrical enclosures are common in other industries but less common in the rail sector.
“Novel ways of working have also played a part in the pursuit of innovation, with visual management techniques being imported from the manufacturing sector in the form of Visual Process Control, which uses simple flexible graphics to represent a work-flow during a short ‘progress update’ meeting. Colleagues usually stand throughout the meetings and the facilitator actively establishes fact-based information, consideration.
with debate taken away for
“‘Task and finish’ teams have been created to pursue discreet areas of innovation and operate under a distributed management model, so are independent of line management and are able to self-select their membership and direction. The teams report progress to the board of
On completion, passengers will benefit from a faster, more reliable railway with the capacity to run: • Two extra trains per hour (each direction) between London and the north west of England; • One extra fast train per hour (each direction) between Manchester and Birmingham; and • One extra freight train per hour (each direction) through Stafford
Staffordshire Alliance The SAIP is being delivered by the Staffordshire Alliance – a partnership of Atkins, Laing O’Rourke, Network Rail and VolkerRail, working as part of a new collaborative contract that will help to transform the delivery of rail infrastructure projects in the UK.
Source: Network Rail
directors on a bi-monthly basis to ensure that results are kept in sharp focus.”
Return on investment?
But all the process improvements in the world would be pointless without real-world outcomes to point to. Progress is being made in this area, Ellwood explained.
“Staffordshire Alliance has already identified around 100 potential items of innovation and implemented around a quarter; this sounds low on first inspection, but is actually a perfectly natural proportion.
“The numbers indicate that we are investigating really challenging items, including those without immediate and obvious financial returns.
This seems counter-intuitive to
some and illustrates one of the fundamental challenges of innovation; that the return on investment is often ambiguous or difficult to quantify. Our standard project management training leads us to reach for the cost-benefit tool kit as a familiar first step and this discounts many areas of innovation immediately, since benefits are often realised by the operator but funded by the installer. A more phlegmatic
approach is required, with the aim being to evaluate the optimum conditions for the innovation to deliver benefit; this often raises insights into intangible or ancillary benefits, which make the opportunity worthwhile.
“As the SAIP progresses, the Alliance will continue to focus on identifying new products and services until the scheme design is complete in the summer of 2014, from which point the focus will shift toward innovation and continuous improvement in construction methodology.”
Rail Live
The Alliance marked that milestone by exhibiting its innovation
challenges at the Rail Live show (more on page 111), helping to show that innovation can occur at all stages of a project, and that innovation can thrive within the rail environment.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
W:
www.networkrail.co.uk/improvements/ stafford-crewe
rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 14 | 37 successes and
Andrew Ellwood
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