Railway Renewal and Maintenance Cost Modelling

306 Pages·2008·4.67 MB·English

Cranfield University

Daniel Ling

Railway Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating

School of Applied Sciences

PhD Thesis
THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Cranfield University

School of Applied Sciences

PhD Thesis

Academic Year 2002-2005

Daniel Ling

Railway Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating

Supervisor : Professor Rajkumar Roy & Dr Esam Shehab

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

©Cranfield University 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without the
written permission of the copyright owner.
THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
ABSTRACT
The aim of this thesis is to present a structured methodology which estimates Railway
Infrastructure renewal and maintenance costs when there is a lack of quantitative cost data
at the early stages of the project life cycle. Furthermore, this thesis presents renewal and
maintenance infrastructure cost estimating issues and investigates current Railway renewal
and maintenance cost estimating practice using an industrial case study approach.

A flexible design using a case study strategy is described as the most appropriate approach
to the successful completion of this study. Industrial case studies using workshops and
interview techniques are the primary sources of data whereas literature is used as the
secondary sources of data. Following the identification of Railway renewal and
maintenance cost estimating issues, a further review of literature leads to the development
of a hypothesis.

In order to investigate the hypothesis a structured cost estimating methodology is
developed which comprises four main stages: creating a project structure that composes the
goal, project criteria and alternatives; collecting the necessary data in the form of pairwise
comparisons made by a domain expert; producing alternative weights using a geometric
mean; and finally employing an algorithmic method using the produced alternative weights
and the known cost of one alternative per criteria. The model was implemented within a
prototype software tool. This provided a means to validate the proposed model using three
industrial case studies.

These results provide evidence that the application of a pairwise comparisons based
methodology to Railway renewal and maintenance cost estimating problems can provide
beneficial. The results indicated that twelve of the fifteen estimates produced by the model
were within the expected accuracy and therefore on most occasions prove the hypothesis to
be true.
- i -
THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
- ii -
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Rajkumar Roy and Dr Esam Shehab for their help and
support over the past three years. The PhD process has been a very challenging and
rewarding experience.

I would like to thank all the Department of Enterprise Integration Staff for providing a
supportive and good working environment. I would also like to thank the entire Centre for
Decision Engineering researchers for their help and support throughout the duration of the
research.

I would like to give a special thank you to, Dr John Hadden, Dr Partick Odougwa, Dr Paul
Blackwell, Dr G Nuno Monteiro Duarte, Dr M Stelling and Dr B Gashi who I have the
pleasure of being friends with, working along side and sharing the experience with.

Finally I would like to thank my Mum and Dad for being there, for there continued support,
without them I would not have achieved what I have today. I would like to thank my sister
for here encouragement and all my friends and family.

Thanks!!

- iii -
LIST OF THE AUTHORS PUBLICATIONS

D. Ling, R. Roy., E. Shehab., J Jaiswal. J. Stretch., Modelling the Cost of Railway Asset
Renewal Projects Using Pairwise Comparisons, Proceedings of the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit.

D. Ling, R. Roy, E. Shehab, J. Jaiswal., Railway Asset Maintenance and Renewal Cost
Estimation Challenges and the Future. 5th Joint ISPA/SCEA International Conference,
Denvor Colorado, USA, June 14-17th 2005.

D. Ling, R. Roy, V. Taratoukhine, Cost Engineering for Track Maintenance & Renewal
within the Railway Industry, 4th World Congress on Cost Engineering, Project
Management and Quantity Surveying, Cape Town, South Africa, April 17 – 21st 2004.

- iv -
THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

- v -
LIST OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................................iii
LIST OF THE AUTHORS PUBLICATIONS.......................................................................iv
LIST OF CONTENTS.............................................................................................................vi
LIST OF TABLES....................................................................................................................x
LIST OF FIGURES..............................................................................................................xiii
CHAPTER 1. Introduction..................................................................................................1
1.1 Overview................................................................................................................1
1.2 Background............................................................................................................1
1.3 Research Overview Map........................................................................................2
1.4 Research Context....................................................................................................4
1.5 Research Collaboration..........................................................................................8
1.5.1 Corus Rail Infrastructure Services...................................................................8
1.5.2 Network Rail....................................................................................................8
1.5.3 Grant Rail.........................................................................................................9
1.5.4 Stagecoach Supertram Maintenance Limited................................................10
1.6 Restructuring of the Railway Industry.................................................................10
1.7 Railway Infrastructure..........................................................................................12
1.8 Renewal and Maintenance...................................................................................13
1.9 Cost Estimating....................................................................................................13
1.10 Research Problem.................................................................................................13
1.11 Research Aim.......................................................................................................14
1.12 Overall Structure of the Thesis............................................................................14
CHAPTER 2. Literature Review......................................................................................17
2.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................17
2.2 Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating........................................................18
2.2.1 Historical Developments of Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating....19
2.2.2 Renewal and Maintenance Management Principles.....................................22
2.2.3 Renewal and Maintenance Techniques.........................................................22
- vi -