Client Snapshot
Organisation: Network rail / Transpennine Route Upgrade
Sector: Rail
Project / Programme: Transpennine Route Upgrade
Scale / Complexity: Major
Key Facts
List qualitative and quantitative outcomes.
- 122km route upgrade project with Network Rail, the TRU West Alliance, and the TRU East Alliance
- align its real-time Field-to-Control Room insight solution to overhaul railway possession activities. This programme wide solution includes tracking completions management, quantities and volumes as well as progress on site.
- Follows on from successful pilot that improved project efficiency by over 20% and reduced hours spent in possessions reporting by over 50%.
- Reduction in stress and fatigue by avoiding duplication and unnecessary communication between multiple stakeholders
- More effective decision-making due to all relevant information in a single place
- Better collaboration between alliance partners, the HQ control room and Network Rail
- Increased productivity by 5% through better visibility, quality and performance tracking and clarity on forecasting
- Live H&S tracking of any accidents and close calls, allowing for analysis of recurring issues and avoidance on future projects
To complete the works successfully within the scheduled time and budget, eviFile has been working in close collaboration with Network Rail and the TRU Alliance partners to align its real-time Field-to-Control Room insight solution to overhaul railway possession activities. This programme wide solution includes tracking completions management, quantities and volumes as well as progress on site.
The contract was awarded following a successful pilot that improved project efficiency by over 20% and reduced hours spent in possessions reporting by over 50%. It is designed to provide a rolling programme of digitalisation, with the aim of providing the East, West and Central delivery teams with a real time view on programme progress.
Background
The 122km route Transpennine Route between York and Manchester transported 29 million passengers between 23 stations from 2019-2020. Prior to the upgrade, trains on this route were often slow, crowded and infrequent leading to an unsatisfactory experience for customers.
The upgrade project which is being overseen by Network Rail, the TRU West Alliance, and the TRU East Alliance includes full electrification, upgraded signalling to increase tracks from two to four in places, as well as other upgrades which will improve line speed – resulting in more frequent and shorter journeys for passengers, as well as supporting the goal of a low-pollution, low-carbon emission snetwork.
The reality before eviFile
The Transpennine Route’is heavily used, but it’s slow, lacks capacity with difficult terrain and poor access roads make works challenging and very disruptive.
The scale of the project means planned disruptions to train services to enable work to be carried out using weekend and holiday closures.
Construction work being delivered on the operational railway with 106 worksites in every 52 weeks that are considered "Highly Disruptive" and across the lifetime of TRU means there are likely to be over 400 blockades longer than 27 hours.
However, Network Rail is committed to keeping passengers moving as often as possible, on time and in comfort. Therefore, handing back the railway on time, after weekend engineering works, is of vital importance.
What Triggered Change
TRU needed to have a real-time view on how work on site is progresing hour by hour to allow decision makers to manage productivity and interventions, removing duplication of reporting.
Rolling out eviFile across the entire TRU Programme demonstrated that the industry has learnt lessons from other major projects, including Crossrail, and the Programme has taken action to solidify its completions strategy right from the outset.
By using eviFile, engineers and site managers are able to collect and process data in a clear, concise way, which further facilitates the use of business intelligence to feed the management team the information they require without any manual intervention.
Ae eviFile is highly customisable and configurable, it rapidly adapts to each organisation’s or project teams processes rather than forcing change. In this case, TRU were able to fully migrate from paper-based forms and excel spreadsheets to digital evidence capture, with audit trails and live reporting dashboards, meaning quality and compliance are managed continuously rather than retrospectively.
The solution overcomes resistance to change by being very simple to use – users on site simply scan a QR code using any mobile device or computer. Emails notify key stakeholders who can then investigate and designate actions to resolve the issue, uploading tagged photo / video upon completion to provide digital evidence.
Each incident is geo-tagged and auto-plotted on a map enabling instant analysis on patterns and trends to provide preventative action.
By using eviFile, engineers and site managers across the programme are able to collect and process crucial data in a clear and structured way, improving the resolution and reporting of incidents, improving safety, and reducing risks.
Managing the Change
Over the course of the pilot program, engagement with the solution continued to be high, resulting in significant reductions in time, which provided a clear return on investment (ROI) for TRU.
Successful rollout is supported through early stakeholder engagement and discovery workshops to discuss required forms, roles and permissions to match current processes. This enables project teams to begin shaping how the system works before full rollout and is an important consideration to consider is when replacing manual or spreadsheet-based processes.
What Changed After eviFile
In the first 18 months of eviFile’s deployment,TRU’s workforce productivity has increased by up to 20% through better data capture, reporting, quality and performance tracking. Saving an average of 2.5 hours in each 24 hours of the possession – coming from quicker and better-informed decisions, faster management of defects and real-time visibility of the impact on the programme.
Over the course of the pilot, eviFile has delivered over 100 possessions, with this number set to increase dramatically as over 1200 users begin to be onboarded to manage all work digitally.
Furthermore, eviFile was able to provide better project control to improve construction performance through increased transparency for the TRU programme. For the first time, clients, Alliances and primary contractors can track all works and activities in real-time, hour-by-hour, from anywhere.
By using the eviFile digital platform, the large-scale TRU programme was able to centralise and consolidate all data across regions, incorporating data from other platforms and workstreams to provide real-time data into PowerBI to deliver completion.
Other Business Benefits
For future projects, in addition to completions management for every discipline, eviFile will be deployed to provide:
- Real time possessions and blockade reporting
- Daily shift reporting and time management
- Close Calls data capture
The team are also using eviFile to improve workflows and create efficiencies that are focussed on improving the sustainability of power production to support their carbon reduction goals.
List qualitative and quantitative outcomes.
- Reduction in stress and fatigue by avoiding duplication and unnecessary communication between multiple stakeholders
- More effective decision-making due to all relevant information in a single place
- Better collaboration between alliance partners, the HQ control room and Network Rail
- Workforce productivity increased by up to 20% through better data capture, reporting, quality and performance tracking.
- Live H&S tracking of any accidents and close calls, allowing for analysis of recurring issues and avoidance on future projects
“eviFile allowed us absolute clarity on status & completion of activities during blockades”
Calum Duncan, Programme Controls Manager, Network Rail