Rail alliancing drawing global interest

Colette Carroll, Global Market Lead – Rail, AtkinsRéalis, spoke to International Railway Journal about the case for collaborative contracting to improve rail project delivery. 

Rail programmes are growing more complex and more exposed to risk, and traditional contracting can struggle to keep pace. One response is the alliance contracting model. 

Pioneered in Australia - where a 2009 government review of 46 major alliance projects found 96% were completed on time or ahead of schedule — it is now used widely in Britain and other markets are seeking to adapt it to their own context. 

AtkinsRéalis is a strong proponent, experiencing the benefits firsthand. It partnered with VolkerRail and Laing O’Rourke in 2013 on the UK’s first pure rail alliance – the Staffordshire Alliance – and the trio have gone on to form the successful East West Rail Alliance connecting Oxford and Cambridge, and now the Midlands Rail Hub centred on Birmingham. 

The engineering services company is also a key player in Central Rail Systems Alliance (CRSA), a 10-year collaboration alongside Network Rail, Balfour Beatty and TSO, which is developing, designing and delivering track renewals and crossings north of London and in the Midlands. 

Rather than the traditional master-servant relationship that can encourage contractors to work in silos, alliance contracting is a higher framework where multiple commissioners, contractors and suppliers sign a single overarching agreement. This approach aligns goals and personnel, encouraging choices that benefit the alliance and the wider project over individual contractors.  

As Colette Carroll, Global Market Lead – Rail, AtkinsRéalis, explains, a successful alliance requires participants to “leave their company badge at the door.” From the tender stage, she says individual contractors must think about who best to partner with and the value of aligning their expertise for the wider project.  

This continues during project delivery through collective decision making. For example, if resequencing is required, rather than focusing on individual deadlines, the team weighs the overall issue and each moving part to agree a decision most likely to keep work on time and on budget.  

“Time is the enemy of cost on a project,” Carroll continues. “An alliance mindset helps to speed up navigating the bumps that can come along… It moves you away from a zero-sum game into outcome choices and quicker decision-making.” 

Deeper alliances

A client can unlock further benefits such as active risk management by embedding itself within the alliance, as Network Rail has done in CRSA and East West Rail. Carroll says this increases the alliance’s ability to make active choices about what it wants to achieve. “The deeper the alliance, the quicker you can make it work,” she says. 

Collaboration reframes risk rather than removing it: it still sits with whoever is best placed to manage it, but a no-blame culture keeps the team focused on solutions rather than apportioning fault. 

Much of this value is created before delivery starts. Bringing the disciplines and the client together early allows design, constructability, cost and programme to be resolved openly rather than locked in during a competitive tender. The numbers bear this out: a 2023 Construction Leadership Council study of 20,000 British projects found those with the strongest early-stage planning cost 20% less and were delivered 10–15% faster than average. In East West Rail, the alliance delivered a major flyover which achieved around £70m in savings through reduced disruption and brought the programme forward by six months, which it attributed to collaborative integration, 4D simulation and modern methods of construction. 

CRSA also shows that alliance contracting is not only appropriate for mega projects, but can be used within a programme of works to cover smaller or repeatable activities, driving value and efficiency over time. 

Cultivating relationships

Inevitably alliance contracting can also pose challenges, notably, remaining aware of external influences and factors that may impact the project but might be outside of the partners’ immediate scope. Cultivating the relationships that will build and sustain the alliance is similarly imperative. “You’ve got to make time for the client and the right behaviours to create that positive culture,” Carroll says.  

Carroll has around two decades of experience of working in alliance contracting and says many of the relationships have matured, with partners often working from “muscle memory.” 

Yet she is quick to point out that every alliance is unique. There is no “cookie cutter” concept that can simply be rolled out somewhere else. Nor is it the answer to every job: the model earns its place on complex, multi-party programmes, and less so where scope is small and well defined, or where speed of procurement matters most. 

Other regions are adopting the model on their own terms rather than importing it wholesale. Canada is the clearest example. In Toronto, AtkinsRéalis is part of the new alliance delivering the East Harbor Transit Hub, one of the first major transit projects in Canada to use an alliance contracting model. Meanwhile, Ontario’s recent tender for the Yonge North Subway Extension specifies delivery through an alliance, a more progressive step putting relational contracting at the heart of procurement. 

“There is growing interest in how you can use relational elements to deal with project complexity,” Carroll says. 

With high-profile rail projects facing cost and delivery difficulties, and programmes growing in complexity, alliancing is fast emerging as a compelling alternative to traditional contract structures. 

This article was first published in the July issue of International Rail Journal.