Consultancies thrive in 21st century railway world

Consultancy firms are currently working on a diverse range of projects in the railway industry.

This November, the final section of High Speed One will open. This is the UK’s first high-speed rail line, formerly known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. With the completion of the route, Eurostar trains will be able to gallop at speeds of 300km/h from Paris Nord and Brussels Midi across the plains of northern France and Belgium, through the Channel Tunnel and over Kent, the so-called ‘Garden of England’. After burrowing into tunnels under East London, the sleek international trains will emerge into daylight to terminate in London’s magnificently refurbished St Pancras International station. A triumph of modern-day engineering, High Speed One is also a tribute to the skills of consultancy firms – not least their political skills.

For in the 1980s when the Channel Tunnel was being constructed, the UK’s nationalised train operator, British Rail, drew up a route for a new high-speed line to link the Tunnel to London that would approach the British capital in the south-eastern quadrant, diving underground in Peckham. The tunnel would go under central London, with Eurostar trains running to a new underground station at King’s Cross.

The British Rail option is not actually the route that has been built. Arup, the large engineering consultancy, put forward an alternative route: one that would cross the river Thames close to the M25 motorway and approach central London from the east. In 1993, Conservative politicians – who were then in government – revealed a dramatic policy switch at their party conference, declaring that they favoured the Arup proposal over the British Rail one.

The principal reason was that the new high-speed line would allow the construction of a new international station at Stratford in east London, which would kick-start the regeneration of a deprived area of the city. It would also facilitate the construction of the so-called Thames Gateway, a corridor alongside the river that the government hoped to develop in order to relieve pressure on more crowded parts of London. This eastern approach to London turned out to have other implications: in 2005 the International Olympic Committee travelled in four-wheel drive cars down the brand new route in tunnel between St Pancras International and Stratford International stations, a trip which may have played a key role in securing the 2012 Olympic Games for London. The Committee was able to see at first hand the new transport infrastructure that would serve the proposed Olympic site at Stratford, and the plan is that in 2012 the short distance between the two stations will be traversed in just seven minutes by the Class 395 ‘Olympic Javelin’ shuttle trains currently being built by Hitachi in Japan.

All this stems from the route proposal put forward by the Arup consultancy. While the country may have benefited from the choice of the Arup route, the firm has too of course. Arup is a key player in Rail Link Engineering: RLE has designed and project managed the construction of High Speed One. Also partners in RLE are the big American engineering consultancy Bechtel, the French firm Systra (in which the French national railway SNCF has a major stake), and the British consultancy Halcrow. RLE carries out design and procurement, and manages the construction of High Speed One, to meet the overall requirements of the client company for the new railway, known as Union Railways. Both Union Railways and RLE are subsidiaries of London & Continental Railways, the consortium that won the build-and-operate concession for the new line.

NoBos

The UK, with its fragmented privatised railway network, is fertile ground for the consultancies, as many companies turn to outside sources of expertise rather than maintaining an in-house capability (in contrast to many of the larger Continental state railways, where a wide spread of competencies are often found within the unitary companies).

While the work of Arup and its colleagues in Rail Link Engineering demonstrate the type of assistance that consultancies can contribute on the infrastructure side of the railways, there is also plenty of work for them in the rolling stock area. High Speed One again provides an example. The order for Class 395s which will operate the ‘Olympic Javelin’ shuttle (and will work domestic commuter trains between Kent and London at times other than the Olympic fortnight in 2012) was a prestigious coup for Hitachi, but the firm needed help if it was to negotiate the labryrinthine maze of rules and regulations it is required to meet before the new trains can run on British rails.

A number of consultancies are helping out in this respect, with Delta Rail (formerly known as AEA Technology) working as Independent Safety Assessor on the Class 395 project, and Interfleet Technology as Notified Body (NoBo). Atlantic Design has undertaken the interior design and brought in Lloyd’s Register Rail to work as Vehicle Acceptance Body for the interiors. This involved LRR checking that the interiors met fire regulations and group standards, providing data for Interfleet’s work as NoBo.

The concept of Notified Body is an interesting one, as it opens up new avenues of work for consultancies. A NoBo is a consultancy that handles vehicle acceptance and related issues under European Community Interoperability Directives, including checking compliance with Technical Standards for Interoperability. The Interoperability Directives form part of the European Commission’s objective of building a ‘standard’ railway in Europe, to come closer to the road model in which all vehicles can go anywhere on the network.

The advent of NoBos was not universally welcomed in the industry. ‘Railway Notified Bodies have had a bad press’ according to Stephen Gaskill, who works for Lloyd’s Register in the UK and the Netherlands and is Vice President of NB Rail, the European Railway Interoperability Notified Body coordination group. ‘They have been perceived as high cost and providing little or no added value. These perceptions stem from a poor understanding of the role of the Notified Body and the EC verification process that they follow.’

Mr Gaskill is adamant that NoBos can add value. ‘If employed effectively, the EC verification process has many benefits above the traditional acceptance processes’ he says. ‘It is well tried across other industries and offers a reduction in verification costs. For larger complex projects, it can also be a driver for employing robust, formal, quality assurance methodologies to railway works, which can also lead to improved quality of the delivered product and improved quality of service.’

Modernising the Underground

The multi-billion pound programme to revitalise the London Underground is providing much work for consultancies. WS Atkins, one of the biggest firms in British consulting, has gone beyond conventional outsourcing: along with engineering firms such as Bombardier and Balfour Beatty, it is a member of the Metronet consortium that has the contract to upgrade two thirds of the LU network.

Although it is a part of the Metronet consortium, Atkins Rail is also undertaking work for Tube Lines, the other company upgrading London’s Underground system. In one contract, Atkins has undertaken a helicopter survey of points machines on the above-ground parts of the Tube Lines network, using pathbreaking video technology to map where defective points heaters may need attention in advance of the winter.

Many other consultancy firms are also participating in LU work. For example, Parsons Brinckerhoff has provided the Master Projects database for LU’s Programme Assurance Office. The database coordinates works, projects and programmes for all parties working on the Underground. This project was the winner in the Major Projects category in Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Projects of the Year Awards.

In April 2007, LU appointed Mott MacDonald to be lead consultant for the detailed design through to construction of the Victoria station upgrade. Used by over 75 million passengers each year, Victoria Underground station is at the heart of London’s transport network, but severe congestion during the morning rush hour has made it necessary to stop passengers coming into the station for a few minutes at a time, so that the platforms don’t become too overcrowded – this crowd control safety measure has to be used several times every weekday.

The £509 million capacity enhancement project is due to start in 2009 and be complete in 2014. When complete, the project will increase the size of the station by about 50% with a new ticket hall, lifts and escalators to ease congestion and provide step-free access from street level to Victoria, Circle and District line platforms.

Further afield

The big state railways in Europe have a long tradition of establishing consultancy divisions to market their expertise in other countries: many railways have been built in the developing world with such help. For example, Systra of France has recently been appointed, in joint venture with Parsons Brinckerhoff, to project manage the planned development of an 11.5 km-long metro system in Mumbai, India.

DE-Consult, one of the big names in this field, has recently changed its identity. The former Deutsche Bundesbahn (German Federal Rail) joined forces in 1966 with Deutsche Bank AG to form DE Consult, a single source for both railway technological know-how and financial expertise. In the years since its foundation, DE-Consult has handled more than a thousand projects for public and private clients in over a hundred countries. In January this year, with the progressive international orientation of Deutsche Bahn AG, the decision was taken to rename DE Consult as DB International.