Railway Standards Review Development and Management

Objective:

1. To establish a system for the transfer of London Underground Limited (LUL) standards to an infrastructure company in preparation for operation under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP). This included the design and management of policies and specifications for standards support software.
2. To promote the process of challenging the standards through a qualitative review of permanent way standards as a precursor for the full technical review of certain standards.
3. To take a lead for the infrastructure company in the revision of contract conditions for Quality, Environment, Safety and Health (QUENSH), in cooperation with LUL staff and managers. This included identification and mitigation of the risks associated with the transfer to QUENSH v.12.
4. To develop and deliver a training course to inform infrastructure company employees and contractors of the roles and responsibilities of the Designated Employers Representative (DER) under QUENSH v.12.

Added value to client:

RM Consultants (RMC) Ltd brought experience of working with other large organisations at the public-private sector boundary and of partial privatisations of these organisations. An important contribution to the success of the transfer was the ability shown by RMC to identify and deploy staff who are capable of integrating seamlessly into the organisation and work effectively with staff from senior management to those with day to day responsibilities for application of the standards.

Activity:

RMC supported the transfer of standards from LUL under the PPP arrangements by implementing five steps:

• Developing of an agreed process for the acceptance of standards by the infrastructure company and introducing a comprehensive standards management system.
• Reviewing qualitatively the permanent way standards to establish where there was a need for a full technical review. This required collecting and compiling comments and opinions from technical staff and preparing recommendations on whether the standards met requirements for clarity, capability of compliance, consistency and safety.
• RMC led the infrastructure company’s contribution to the revision of the QUENSH standard by discussion with managers and staff and also presenting the recommendations at review meetings.
• Creating a risk based Designated Employers Representative (DER) training programme for those with responsibilities under QUENSH v.12 for managing the contractors who are providing services to the Underground. The course has been delivered numerous times over a three-year period to nearly 500 individuals and continues to be delivered.
• RMC developed a standards management manual detailing the process to be employed by the infrastructure company for standards management.