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How Understanding a Railway's Historic Evolution Can Guide Future

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How Understanding a Railway's Historic Evolution Can Guide Future College of Engineering, School of Civil Engineering University of Birmingham Managing Technical and Operational Change: How understanding a railway’s historic evolution can guide future development: A London Underground case study. by Piers Connor Submitted as his PhD Thesis DATE: 15th February 2017 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Managing Technical & Operational Development PhD Thesis Abstract The argument for this thesis is that patterns of past engineering and operational development can be used to support the creation of a good, robust strategy for future development and that, in order to achieve this, a corporate understanding of the history of the engineering, operational and organisational changes in the business is essential for any evolving railway undertaking. It has been the objective of the author of this study to determine whether it is essential that the history and development of a railway undertaking be known and understood by its management and staff in order for the railway to function in an efficient manner and for it to be able to develop robust and appropriate improvement strategies in a cost-effective manner. The above argument was advanced because of various widely published and well- known problems in the industry where projects have failed to be completed, where there have been long and unnecessary delays to work or production or where accidents and incidents were caused by a lack of experience, knowledge or understanding of staff. In this thesis, it is shown that a railway is a complicated and complex system, being an entity that combines staff and a fixed infrastructure and moving components and equipment, all of which are expensive to install, operate and maintain. Since the operational life of much of the hardware is greater than the time employees spend in service on the railway, it is common for the origins and reasons for systems developed and / or installed on the railway to be forgotten. Knowledge of the reasons for retaining or changing processes and systems can be lost when staff retire or leave the employment of the railway and newcomers rarely appreciate the background and purpose of some of the systems still in place when they join the organisation. Generally, little attention is paid to history and development during training; indeed, such knowledge may not even be considered necessary or relevant. The writer of this thesis uses London Underground as a case study to show how the engineering and operational development of the system has impacted on the design of rolling stock. The objective of the work is to show how the development needs arose, how they were addressed, what were the outcomes and what lessons were (or were not) learnt as a result. The rate of progress is discussed, as are the reasons for that rate. There are also suggestions for the reasoning behind the evolution and how these led to the specific solutions. The author offers suggestions as to the way in which development might be managed in the future and what the risks might be. He suggests that, in systems engineering terms, railways must generate rich requirements and use rich traceability in order to establish a process of learning from history that is not entirely dependent on knowledge being retained and long serving staff. It should be noted that this is not a historiographical study and, whilst it draws upon academic literature on corporate memory loss, it is also not intended as a contribution in this field. Piers Connor 1 Managing Technical & Operational Development PhD Thesis The author of the thesis concludes that it is essential for railway engineering and operations managers to understand the way in which technical systems and operational arrangements have evolved on a railway during its history, both as a result of conscious decisions and happenstance. The case study shows how its development history has shaped the current London Underground system and is still shaping it today. In fact, the author proposes that the railway is vitally dependent on an understanding of its past if it is to succeed in obtaining the most cost-effective and stakeholder-friendly solutions for its ongoing development. Piers Connor 2 Managing Technical & Operational Development PhD Thesis Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... i Contents ..................................................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ ix List of Tables .......................................................................................................................................... xiii Glossary of Terms / List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................... xiv Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... 18 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 19 1.1. Background ........................................................................................................................... 19 1.1.1 Mainline Example 1: WCML Modernisation ......................................................................... 21 1.1.2 Mainline Example 2: GWR Main Line Electrification ........................................................ 23 1.1.3 London Underground Example 1: Jubilee Line Extension ............................................. 24 1.1.4 London Underground Example 2: Sub Surface Lines Resignalling ............................ 25 1.2. Problem Statement ............................................................................................................ 27 1.3. Aim and ObJectives ............................................................................................................. 28 1.4. Overview of Work Done .................................................................................................... 29 1.5. Overview of Methods Used .............................................................................................. 30 1.6. Overview of Findings and Conclusions ........................................................................ 31 1.7. Critical Reflection on the Study ...................................................................................... 32 1.8. Structure of the Thesis ...................................................................................................... 32 2. Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 35 2.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 35 2.2. Approach ............................................................................................................................... 35 2.3. Primary Quantitative Sources ........................................................................................ 37 2.4. Secondary Quantitative Sources .................................................................................... 37 2.5. Primary Qualitative Sources ........................................................................................... 38 2.6. Secondary Qualitative Sources ....................................................................................... 39 2.7. Participant Observation through Personal Experience ........................................ 39 2.8. Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 40 Piers Connor 3 Managing Technical & Operational Development PhD Thesis 2.9. Summary ................................................................................................................................ 41 3. Literature Review ........................................................................................................................ 43 3.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 43 3.2. The Orderly Railway .......................................................................................................... 43 3.3. The Wheel-Rail Interface ................................................................................................. 44 3.4. The Military Railway ......................................................................................................... 44 3.5. Officers and Men ................................................................................................................
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