Operations, optimised: Why improved O&M is the key to rail's transformation

From unlocking efficiencies to reducing carbon, a focus on Operations and Maintenance (O&M) is the key to accelerating rail's progress towards a sustainable, user-centred railway. But to realise these benefits requires an integrated approach to O&M, delivered by partners with the experience to identify and improve O&M strategies across different functions, departments, and markets. As operators and maintainers of railways, we can inform rail schemes with invaluable real-world experience, integrating the downstream needs of O&M, reducing risk and optimising outcomes right from the start.

At last, rail is increasingly prioritised as a critical component of tomorrow’s economy, from net zero to mobility. But getting the green light is just the start. With budgets getting tighter and tighter, rail projects are expected to demonstrate efficiencies across the lifecycle, and especially in Operations and Maintenance (O&M). Representing the largest portion of the asset’s existence, optimising O&M can be the difference between lean efficiency and ballooning costs. 

Smarter asset management starts in planning and design. Anticipating and optimising O&M strategies early on offers the opportunity to adapt design accordingly. In turn, this can enable efficient optimisation that reduces risk and waste. However, this requires integrating the diverse needs of different stakeholders, so that they can be incorporated from the start. A partner with through-lifecycle experience can support the delivery of resilient, reliable and efficient rail operations. Integration is the key - but unless it’s initiated early in the process, it cannot deliver the promised benefits. 

Practice makes perfect 

Rail schemes present a number of divergent needs. Passengers, operators, and authorities will each have their own priorities. Outcomes like resilience, carbon reduction, and affordability aren’t always easy to align. Moreover, linear delivery processes can end up passing unforeseen problems downstream, threatening these beneficial outcomes.  

As complexity grows, so does risk. Operationalising complex railway systems and bringing them into use is one thing; optimising the requirements of a long-term operator and maintainer to minimise risk and maximise efficiencies is another. Even when delivery goes to plan, handover can reveal unexpected problems for operators, preventing the smooth, efficient O&M on which benefits depend. Linear models are increasingly exposed as insufficient.   

Complexity weakens confidence partly because it exceeds theoretical knowledge. Simply put, in real-world situations, both the range of factors and their potential interplay surpasses any single discipline’s modelling. Instead, what’s needed is to integrate multidisciplinary insights across all phases and stages of a project. The most valuable knowledge is hard-won experience throughout the lifecycle. At AtkinsRéalis, we have firsthand experience of client-side O&M advisory on major rail projects in the UK and Australia, supporting business cases, procurement and delivery. But we also manage O&M ourselves, on major rail projects in North America and Canada. This experience across both disciplines in major projects globally has shown the importance of integrating O&M needs early so complexity can be confronted with confidence. 

Running down the risk 

Yet complexity itself isn’t the underlying problem - the underlying problem is the risk that complexity entails. Integration promotes flexibility, and flexibility reduces risk - especially the risk of late-stage design changes. Everyone knows that changes post-design, or even post-delivery, are a headache: costly, challenging, and fraught with problems for passengers. Integration means widening the scope beyond the specific requirements of any particular phase, preventing needless rigidity downstream.  

Our work on Canada Line, a 19km fully-automated rail line on Vancouver’s SkyTrain network, shows how. Our work has extended across the project lifecycle, from construction all the way to the O&M services we provide today. Through an integrated approach, we stimulated collaboration between multiple stakeholders across 400 design, supply, and construction contracts. It paid off: construction was completed 110 days ahead of schedule. Running at an average availability rate of 99.8%, the Canada Line is setting the standard for ridership and customer satisfaction. 

No railway is an island 

Ultimately, delivering their promised benefits - mobility, sustainability, value for money - depends on how well they connect with other systems, from the wider railway to the road network, the energy grid to shipping ports. Similarly, success also depends on how well they connect with subtler systems embedded within the fabric of infrastructure. That’s why our delivery of major rail systems as turnkey projects also includes significant emphasis on systems integration and systems assurance, to ensure multiple subsystems from a wide range of suppliers support safe and efficient operations. Whether metro, light rail, or mainline routes, this can include tunnel operations, modern automatic and high capacity signalling systems, introduction of new rolling stock and integration with existing networks.  

If each supplier assures only their own contribution, the interoperability between subsystems, and of the system as a whole, can introduce unacceptable risk. It’s our duty to take responsibility for the whole, by understanding the relationship between all the parts. That’s what makes true O&M integration hard to initiate, but the resulting benefits are invaluable. Linear, non-integrated models appear simpler and cheaper, but by pushing potential issues downstream (where they’re harder to rectify) they cause costs and delays to hide, compound, and eventually disrupt.  

And while efficiencies often seem like an aspirational ‘nice-to-have’, in today’s world they’re essential. 

The tighter budgets become, and the more complex major projects grow, the less scope there is for misused funds or wasteful design. As scrutiny increases, rail projects must rise to the challenge and take responsibility, or else face the loss of support that disappointing outcomes could precipitate. Operations and maintenance can be the difference between success and failure; the path to one or the other starts with the project itself.