UK West Coast Route Modernisation Project

Overview

The West Coast Main Line is a principal UK railway artery serving London, the Midlands, the North West and Scotland. The Line is responsible for over 2,000 train movements each day, with more than 75 million rail journeys made each year on the route; it accounts for 43% of Britain’s UK freight market (RailwayPeople 2011). In 1998, the British government embarked on a modernization program, called the West Coast Route Modernisation (WCRM) project, to carry out a significant volume of modernization work between 1998 and 2008, delivering increased capacity and reduced journey times as well as replacing worn-out parts of the railway. It was challenging job involving 640 kilometers of track—much of it incapable of carrying high-speed rail cars. Some sections were seriously dilapidated, and new trains would require a complete overhaul of signaling, power supply, and switching systems. This vignette is based on information from an INCOSE publication on systems engineering case studies [INCOSE 2011] and a report of the UK National Audit Office [NAO 2006].

Vignette Description

Early on the WCRM upgrade had serious problems. A major complicating factor was the introduction of new signaling technology to allow improved services delivered by new trains running at 140 miles per hour. By 2001, neither the rail infrastructure upgrade nor the new trains were on course for delivery as set out in the 1998 agreement. By May 2002 the projection of the program’s final cost had risen from £2.5 billion (in 1998) to £14.5 billion, but had delivered only a sixth of its scope.

In January 2002, the UK Secretary of State instructed the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) to intervene and find a way to renew and upgrade the West Coast Main Line. An SRA analysis identified the following problems:

The program lacked direction and leadership before 2002. The project did not have a delivery strategy and central point for responsibility and communication across the program.
There was a lack of openness and communication of the program to interested parties before 2002 and a lack of stakeholder management.
Scope changes arose because WCRM did not have an agreed specification which matched required outputs with inputs; and there was inadequate knowledge about the West Coast asset condition.
Technology issues, in the decision to replace conventional signaling with unproven moving block signaling, introduced major risk into deliverability and cost before 2002. Technology issues caused scope changes and program delay.
Project management was weak, with a lack of senior management skills, too many changes in personnel and ill-defined and fragmented roles and responsibilities. There was no integrated delivery plan and there was limited oversight of contractors. Poor management of contracts added to costs.

In order to remedy the situation The SRA initiated the following actions, which align with good SE practice:

set a clear direction for the project, in its June 2003 West Coast Main Line Strategy, specifying what it wanted to achieve;
established a clear, measurable set of program outputs, along with more detailed infrastructure requirements, which were then subject to systematic change control and monitoring procedures fixing scope, and then inviting contractors to tender to complete detailed designs and deliver the work to a fixed price;
instituted clear program governance structures;
and consulted widely with stakeholders and kept them informed.

The NAO report concluded that the new arrangements worked well and that the benefits included: facilitating a more intrusive regime of obtaining possession of the track for engineering work through extended blockades, which was crucial to delivery as access had been the program's key constraint and one of the key cost drivers; and identifying opportunities to reduce the program cost by over £4 billion. The NAO report also discussed a business case analysis by the Strategic Rail Authority that identified the following benefits:

benefit:cost ratio for the enhancements element was 2.5:1.
journey times and train frequencies exceeded the targets set out in the 2003 West Coast Strategy
growth in passenger numbers exceeded expectations (e.g., by 2005-06, following Phase 1 of the West Coast programme, annual passenger journeys on Virgin West Coast grew by more than 20 per cent)
punctuality improved (e.g., by September 2006, on average, Virgin West Coast trains have been delayed by 9.5 minutes, a 43 per cent improvement on the average delay of 17 minutes in September 2004)

The WCRM problems could be associated with a number of system engineering concepts and practices: stakeholders requirements, planning, analysis of risks and challenges of new technology, decision management, change management, information management, and management oversight.

Summary

The WCRM project illustrates when SE concepts and practices are not used or applied properly, system development can experience serious debilitating problems. This project also demonstrates how such problems can be abated and reversed when system engineering principles and methods are applied.

References

INCOSE Transportation Working Group. Systems Engineering in Transportation Projects: A Library of Case Studies. Issue 1.0, March 9th, 2011.
NAO, The Modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, Report by the Comptroller And Auditor General. National Audit Office. HC 22 Session 2006-2007. November 22, 2006.
RailwayPeople. “West Coast Route Modernisation,” CareerSite.biz, http://www.railwaypeople.com/rail-projects/west-coast-route-modernisation-3.html (accessed July 25, 2011).

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