Rail Safety

In Australia, rail transport is a modern, national and diverse industry and one that plays a key role when it comes to the integrated logistics supply chain.

Rail is also a significant contributor to both the rural and regional economies of Australia, producing economic benefits of around $7.7 billion annually.

As a transport industry, risks are very real for the rail sector. The risk of a collision with another train, a vehicle at a level crossing or a pedestrian, and of course, derailment is a major public safety concern to the rail industry. The fallout from such incidents would also have wider business and reputational ramifications.

In addition to the above safety risks, the rail industry is under increased public scrutiny concerning large infrastructure and rolling stock projects to ensure they are delivered on time, to budget, safely and to specification.

Project Overview // South Morang Extension Rail Project Due Diligence Review – Department of Transport

In late 2008 the Department of Transport enlisted R2A to complete a top-down due diligence risk review of the South Morang rail extension prior to tender. This involved three key tasks.

Firstly, a functional review of the concept project was completed focusing on potential impacts to whole of government policy critical success factors for rail projects. The second task of this project was to identify and raise issues on a zonal vulnerability basis by examining the project incrementally, travelling from Keon Park to South Morang. The combined result of these two tasks was a high level appreciation of the credible critical issues and the potential impact these could have on the project. The project team undertook further work to clarify these primary concerns. This enabled the third task, a prediction of the potential costs of these risk issues to be estimated at the time of tender. The cost of risk at tender was estimated in two parts, the cost of risk to the Department of Transport (DoT) and the cost of risk to the successful contractor.

Project Overview // Tram Procurement Project – Public Transport Victoria

PTV adopted a criticality driven project due diligence (rather than a project risk management) procurement process for the procurement of 50 E Class trams. The process  involves keeping everyone’s eyes focused on the prize and ensuring no one loses sight of the overall objectives of the project.  A series of independently facilitated functional threat and vulnerability reviews at strategic points in the procurement process helped to achieve this.

A case study of the Class E tram procurement process was presented at the Mastering Complex Projects Conference in 2014 with representative outputs of the process. Specifically, the approach does not use the risk based approach of the risk management standard as this is logically unable to positively demonstrate due diligence for the critical, rare potential project show stoppers, the issues of greatest concern and difficulty for senior decision makers.

To download the case study.

Project Overview // Safety Due Diligence Review – Metro Trains Melbourne

A safety due diligence review of the Comeng doors was completed in order to develop a SFAIRP (so far as is reasonably practicable) argument for a possible life extension of the fleet. The review included the sliding saloon doors, the interconnecting carriage doors as well as the trailing driver cab doors.

Our Clients

• Public Transport Victoria

• QTECTIC Partners in Rail