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 - 2.2.4 Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating Techniques and Keys Issues ..26 2.2.5 Key Observations...........................................................................................30 2.3 Railway Infrastructure Cost Estimating ..............................................................31 2.3.1 Railway Renewal and Maintenance Planning Process .................................31 2.3.2 Railway Renewal and Maintenance Process.................................................32 2.3.3 Availability.....................................................................................................34 2.3.4 Deterioration of Track Geometry / Defects...................................................35 2.3.5 Age/Tonnage Based Approach......................................................................36 2.3.6 Condition Based Approach............................................................................36 2.3.7 Historical Developments................................................................................37 2.3.8 Life Cycle Cost Analysis ...............................................................................38 2.3.9 Key Observations...........................................................................................52 2.4 Key Challenges in Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating.........................53 2.5 Knowledge Capture and Reuse Approaches .......................................................54 2.6 Cost Engineering/Estimating Definitions............................................................56 2.7 Cost Estimating Approaches................................................................................57 2.7.1 Traditional Costing ........................................................................................57 2.7.2 Bottom Up......................................................................................................58