Severn Partnership Working with ABC Electrification Summary:

Over the last couple of years, Severn Partnership have been working with ABC Electrification as part of the Great Western Electrification Programme, otherwise known as GWEP. This is one of Britain’s oldest and busiest railway lines which Network Rail are electrifying. The programme will improve connections and provide more reliable journeys, faster and greener across England and South Wales for thousands of passengers. Electrification comes with many benefits; such as less impact on rail infrastructure, less carbon emissions, cheaper to operate and much quieter.

ABC Electrification was formed by Alstom, Babcock and Costain to facilitate Network Rail’s programme for GWEP. ABC combine design, engineering and delivery expertise across all electrification activities, so they can be trusted with the most complex, demanding programmes.

Benefits:

Severn Partnership and ABC developed a solid working relationship. This proved very beneficial in many ways for both companies, such as:

  • Establish best practice and shared services
  • Boosting productivity,
  • Improved services across both companies
  • More effective execution that saves time (through faster decision making) and money (from resource sharing, knowledge transfer, and lower interaction costs)
  • Greater innovation and bolder strategic moves thanks to the cross-pollinate of ideas and the abolition of impenetrable boundaries between businesses
  • Higher motivation and morale deriving from the greater trust between individuals and the sense of belonging to a community that is working toward shared goals
  • Greater flexibility in reacting to changes in specification and survey requirement

Challenges:

During the initial phases of the project there was limited understanding of the available data and the procurement methods available for use on the railway.

  • Getting all parties to understand the use of survey grids and the effect of using multiple grids on a project of this size.
    • solution – Agreeing on the use of the project snake grid.
  • Restricted access and limited time on track.
    • solution – RILA360 to capture vast majority of data greatly reduce the need for ‘boots on the ground’ (see Phil Pitman’s quote below)
  • Logistics and site planning while working with other, to make best use of access.
    • SP assigned dedicated team to project, regular working out of abc office to coordinate planning.
  • Utilising existing survey data and transforming to project grid after verification, this meant less site visits (add this to solutions for restricted access)

Testimonial:

“During the initial phases of our project there was limited understanding of the available data and the procurement methods available for use on the railway. The forward engagement and consulting provision from the whole Severn partnership team was well received and enabled the project team to start to develop an understanding of the complex requirements of the clients survey data.

Severn’s consulting assistance has helped the project at various stages throughout including advising the team about the achievable time/cost savings of the use of the RILA360 technology to achieve what was a optimistic 8 month programme; the output of the deployed technology by Severn and Fugro was a 5 month survey and model turnaround with a reduction of “boots on the ground” hours of over 90% – a huge, positive safety impact on our workforce.

At the Severn Tunnel , the understanding of the complex survey parameters and modelling restriction of the four mile long tunnel, bestowed by SP to ABC, allowed our team to understand the issues around both procuring the data and modelling the information.

Finally, the addition of the completed ground installed primary, secondary and tertiary survey control network – utilised for our RILA procurement, means that the project team has the most accurate survey data available throughout the Great Western Electrification Programme – this should enable the reduction of design risks that have been experienced from a lesser quality procured product elsewhere on the programme.

Above all of this was a consistent team for ABC to approach for all delivery aspects, of which a solid rapport was built that remained professional at the times that required it, but allowed good collaborative working on a week by week basis to ensure consistent planning of the weekend works.”

Phil Pitman, Data Acquisition Manager, ABC

Do you have a project in need of our expertise?

Severn Partnership are committed to providing a consistent service across all industry sectors. This starts with a consultation on how we can add value and ultimately save money and deliver on time, in a professional and safe manner. We promote a collaborative approach on all of our projects and it is important we understand our clients from the offset.