Understanding the Four Key Components of Railway Integration

Picture this: A rail project is in final testing and commissioning. Political pressure is mounting to open the railway and budgets are running dry.

The testing team unexpectedly finds a missing function, which operations management plans and training rely on. The railway can’t open without it, and there is no quick fix.

Questions are asked, fingers are pointed and challenges made. When collaboration is needed most, none can be found.

How did we get here?

In the rail industry, system integration typically begins towards the end of a project’s life cycle, leaving little time to make necessary corrections when a malfunction is identified. Railway integration—bringing people, programs, processes and technology together from the beginning of the project to form a single system—can help address this problem. Starting railway integration during the concept phase and embedding it into the project culture, ensures collaborative decision making to design and construct an operational, high-performance railway on time and on budget. In addition, because railway integration aligns people, programs, processes and technology, it is much easier to eliminate or mitigate potential system malfunctions long before the railway is scheduled to open.

However, to fully comprehend railway integration, we must understand its four key components:

• Technical integration
• People integration
• Program integration
• Process integration

Technical integration is the process of connecting different subsystems from different entities on a physical and technical level. Developing a system design for an entire railway requires the use of common, proven tools such as system architectures, system definitions, interface registers and system requirements. We can easily establish the relationships between subsystems that must be formed to create the railway. However, we must also ensure the technical information is ready at the point of use, error free and based on the same input data. This is true for both delivery and operation of the railway. For delivery, it is critical that technical integration is based on a system design featuring strong configuration management throughout the project life cycle. For operation, it is imperative that training, operation and maintenance plans reflect the system design.

People integration is ensuring a railway is usable by the people that are delivering it, operators, maintenance teams and passengers. To achieve this, we must consider how people will use the system in all operating conditions. In addition, because advances in modern technology have made people more technically savvy, we are expected to innovate railways while providing real-time information that enables informed decisions to be made throughout the process. Before a railway opens to the public, it is imperative those operating and maintaining it have a clear understanding of how its different systems are connected. Using operational scenarios and use cases to explain how functionality will work in all conditions is essential.

Program integration is the ability to coordinate contracts and schedules from different contractors to ensure the right information is provided at the right time to the right parties. With contractual milestones fast approaching, integrating contractors’ schedules becomes a high priority to avoid penalties for delays or poor performance. While understandable, at this stage of the project, simply aligning contractors’ schedules is not good enough. It is also necessary to make sure technical integration has occurred before any information is shared. If information shared by one contractor to another is not ready, error free or correctly configured, the risk of potential system malfunctions and project delays is significantly increased. Having intelligent integration milestones that define not only when information is shared, but also the quality of the information is vital.

Process integration ensures systems engineering is delivered correctly by using a framework that values a contractor’s time and internal processes to improve collaboration and coordination. Over time, many contractors have developed their own processes for systems development and design highlighting their creativity, experience and expertise. Empowering them to use these processes enables systems engineering to occur in a thoughtful, controlled manner encouraging innovation and helping the project finish on time and on budget. To accomplish this, tools for requirements management, interface management, software management, configuration and change control management must be defined in a manner that fosters collaboration while giving contractors the freedom to follow their well-established processes.

Technical integration, people integration, program integration and process integration must be well understood, resourced, planned and budgeted from the beginning of a project to achieve successful railway integration. The question is, “How do we quantify it?” By their very nature, major railway projects are bespoke, and one solution does not fit all. Using a systems-thinking approach to railway integration helps define the project challenge, not just in terms of civil engineering and rail systems construction, but also the ability to integrate different elements to form a single system—the railway.

The bottom line: delivering an integrated, high-performance railway starts on day one.