The Railway as a System

Etc. Venues Liverpool Street, London

14 October 2015 - 15 October 2015
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Overview

Railways are perhaps the ultimate engineered system. Bringing everything together and making it work – safely and optimally - is not easy. Learn directly from managers and engineers working on some of the toughest and most interesting railway system engineering challenges in the industry today.

The railway is one of the most complex systems created by humans, involving nearly every branch of engineering, from power generation and distribution to control electronics, heavy structural engineering to human factors and geophysics to GPS.

With the implementation of Crossrail and Thameslink, national electrification programmes, HS2, HS3 and Crossrail 2, railway systems engineering is facing a challenging time to integrate so many assets, disciplines and geographic boundaries.

This ambitious conference will look at the best practical railway systems experience: what works and what doesn’t? Where are the key risks and opportunities? With great speakers and case studies from the whole industry, we will take the whole railway apart piece by piece, learn from mistakes made and put it back together as a more efficient system.

• Iain Flynn
Head of Network Operations Business Planning; Professional Head, Sponsorship
Network Rail

Confirmed attendees include:

Adende (UK) Ltd, Atkins, Balfour Beatty Rail Technologies, Bijing Jiaotong University, Bombardier Transportation UK, CRA, ERA Technology, Eurostar International, Faiveley Transport, Frazer-Nash Consultancy, Interfleet Technology, London Underground, Malcolm Dobell Consulting, Network Rail, Risk Tech, RSSB, SMA and Partners, South West Trains, Transport for London, Vinci and many more...

ORGANISING COMMITTEE - Railway Division

Members Credits:

• Phil Hinde
Principal Engineer, Rolling Stock and Depots
Crossrail

• Kuldeep Gharatya
Head of Technical Strategy, Systems Performance & Innovation
London Underground

• Graham Neil
Professional Head of Rolling Stock
London Underground

• Mark Howard
Acting Director of Rail Systems Engineering
High Speed Two (HS2)

Day 1

08:30 - WEDNESDAY 14 OCTOBER 2015

REGISTRATION AND REFRESHMENTS

09:00 THE INSTITUTION’S PERSPECTIVE
CHAIR’S OPENING REMARKS: WHAT IS SYSTEMS ENGINEERING?
Iain Flynn, Head of Network Operations Business Planning Professional Head, Sponsorship, Network Rail
• Addressing organisation complexity: getting that out of the way
• Understanding limitations: legacy assets, economics, and the laws of physics
• How weak links undermine the whole system

09:15 THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
KEYNOTE: KEEPING LONDON MOVING
Gareth Powell, Director of Strategy and Service Development, London Rail at Transport for London
• Understanding the requirements of London as a growing city
• Explore projects to improve capacity
• Understanding the challenges faced by London Underground and Rail

09:40 THE ENGINEER’S PERSPECTIVE CROSS-INDUSTRY INSIGHT: SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE RAILWAY
Graham Hopkins, Director Safety, Technical and Sustainability, Network Rail

PANEL DISCUSSION: WHAT DOES SYSTEMS ENGINEERING MEAN TO YOU AND YOUR ORGANISATION?
• Understanding the system level issues
• Optimising existing infrastructure and the challenges of existing spaces
• Uniting engineering and political perspectives

10.40 NETWORKING REFRESHMENT BREAK

BASE CAMP: GETTING MORE FROM THE LEGACY RAILWAY THROUGH INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENT

11:10 CASE STUDY: WATERLOO TO WOKING: HOW MUCH MORE CAN AN OVERCROWDED RAILWAY TAKE?
David Clarke, Director of Innovation, RSSB and Clive Roberts, Professor of Railway Systems, University of Birmingham

11:35 SYSTEMS ENGINEERING IN THE SOUTH WESTERN RAILWAY John Halsall, Alliance Infrastructure Director, Network Rail
• Connecting operations and infrastructure
• Insight into the CREST project and capacity enhancement on South West Trains

12:00 THE CAPACITY CHALLENGE ON LONDON’S OVERGROUND
Geoff Hobbs, Head of Transport Planning, Transport for London Rail and Underground
• Causes of demand growth and its impact on London Overground
• TfL’s role in funding, sponsoring and project delivery
• Infrastructure and rolling stock solutions
• Delivery in practice on both TfL and Network Rail estates
• What’s next to keep up with growth on London Overground?

12:30 NETWORKING LUNCH
Chair: Kuldeep Gharatya, Head of Technical Strategy, System Performance and Innovation Capital Programmes Directorate, London Underground

13:30 THE CHALLENGES OF TRANSPENNINE
Fiona Dolman, Director of Capacity Planning, Network Rail and Chris Nutton, Programme Director, First TransPennine Express First Group
• Understand the challenges of moving from four trains an hour to five
• Transition from a ‘loose-coupled’ to a ‘tightly-coupled’ system
• Ensuring attention to detail and ultimately what makes it all work

14:05 OPTIMISING THE LEGACY SYSTEM – THE CHALLENGE OF FLEET MAINTENANCE
Peter Smyth, Chief Mechanical Engineer, Irish Rail
• Railway fleet maintenance public sector co-existence with private sector suppliers
• What to outsource and what to do in-house for best fit fleet maintenance
• Improving fleet and depot safety, reliability and performance with major resource constraints
• Changing attitudes and “the way we have always done things” using LEAN techniques

14:30 LONDON UNDERGROUND: SERVING THE 24 HOUR CITY
Keith Foley, Head of Night Tube, London Underground
• The case for a 24 hour tube service – does London really need it?
• Integrated transport – changing the face of overnight travel on all modes
• The asset challenge – maintaining and upgrading the railway after Night Tube launch

15:00 NETWORKING REFRESHMENT BREAK

CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN: COMPLETE LINE UPGRADES

15:40 GREAT WESTERN ROUTE MODERNISATION THROUGH INDUSTRY SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
Tim Coffey, GWRM Head of Industry Systems Integration, Network Rail
• Gain an overview of the current programme
• Insight into leading systems integration across the industry
• Explore the lessons learned and critical success factors

16:00 CROSSRAIL: INTEGRATION OF THE END-TO-END RAILWAY
Chris Sexton, Technical Director, Crossrail
• Crossrail’s definition of ‘railway integration’
• Gain insight into the roles and accountabilities within Crossrail
• Explore the tools and governance currently in place

16:40 CHAIR’S CLOSING REMARKS
Kuldeep Gharatya, Head of Technical Strategy, System Performance and Innovation Capital Programmes Directorate, London Underground

16:50 END OF CONFERENCE DAY ONE

Day 2

08:30 - THURSDAY 15 OCTOBER 2015

08:30 REGISTRATION AND REFRESHMENTS

09:00 CHAIR’S OPENING REMARKS
Mark Howard, Acting Director of Rail Systems Engineering, High Speed Two (HS2) Ltd

09:10 TECHNOLOGICAL DETOUR
COOLING THE UNDERGROUND - A SYSTEMS APPROACH
Tony Lightfoot, Lead Systems Performance Engineer, London Underground
• The challenge: demand, capacity and constraints
• A systems approach: performance, power and cooling
• Innovation: tackling future demand

09:40 OPTIMISATION IN TUNNELS 2: HIGH SPEED TUNNELS
Mark Gilbey, Principal Engineer, Parsons Brinckerhoff
• Exploring the sources of heat in higher speed tunnels
• Understanding the impacts of heat on systems and comfort
• Heat mitigation and balancing throughout

10:10 DEALING WITH ADHESION AT AN INDUSTRY LEVEL: AWG AND ARG
Mark Hopwood, Managing Director, First Great Western and Neil Ovenden, Chair of the Adhesion Working Group
• The underlying engineering problem
• It’s serious: scale and mitigations
• Managing a deeply technical problem through organisational complexity
• What next?

10:40 NETWORKING REFRESHMENT BREAK

11:10 THE PLATFORM TRAIN INTERFACE STRATEGY IN NETWORK RAIL
David Galloway, Senior Engineer Track and Civils, Network Rail
• The challenge of the platform train interface
• Lessons learned
• Next steps

11:50 HS2 PLATFORM TRAIN INTERFACE STRATEGY
Thomas Williamson, Traction & Rolling Stock Engineer, High Speed Two (HS2)
• Background to the challenge and the case for level access
• Establishing suitable requirements for the new interface
• HS2’s emerging solution

12:30 NETWORKING LUNCH

REACHING THE SUMMIT: BIG TICKET PROJECTS
Chair: Phil Hinde, Principal Engineer, Rolling Stock and Depots, Crossrail

13:20 HOW HS2 WILL ADDRESS SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Giles Thomas, Rail Systems Director, HS2
• Planning for whole life costs and asset management
• Opportunities and challenges facing HS2 design and delivery
• Designing a systems passenger and operational need

14:10 CROSSRAIL 2: A NEW RAILWAY FOR LONDON AND THE SOUTH EAST
Stephen Pauling, Transport Planning Manager, Crossrail 2
• What is Crossrail 2?
• Why does London and the South East need Crossrail 2?
• Work on Crossrail 2 to date, including option appraisal and next steps

14:40 NETWORKING REFRESHMENT BREAK

15:10 THINKING WHOLE SYSTEM
Mike Brownsword, Principal Systems Engineering Consultant, Atkins Global
• “What’s the problem, it’s just a railway?”: balancing objectives
• Working across disciplines: terminology and consistency
• Facilitating consistent discussion: frameworks for development

15:40 PANEL DISCUSSION: ADDRESSING THE IMPACT OF CAPACITY AND GROWTH
• People: predicting how demand will increase in the coming years and ensuring passenger expectations are met
• There hasn’t always been growth – will it continue?
• Product: evaluating the service as a whole
• Process: identifying areas to improve operations

16:20 CHAIR’S CLOSING REMARKS
With Organising Committee

16:30 END OF CONFERENCE

JOHN HALSALL: ALLIANCE INFRASTRUCTURE DIRECTOR, NETWORK RAIL

John Halsall is currently Alliance Infrastructure Director at Network Rail. John previously held the position of Technical Services Director. He joined Network Rail in 2009 after an 18 year career with Thames Water. On 17 February 2014 John was called upon to be the Director for the Strategic Crisis Management Team. The team’s remit was to co-ordinate Network Rail’s immediate response to the extreme weather, and then to deliver a strategic, consistent and timely response to operational resilience in the future.

PETER SMYTH: CHIEF MECHANICAL ENGINEER, IRISH RAIL

Peter Smyth is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer who has principal responsibility for the provision of the maintenance and overhaul of all rolling stock operated by state owned Irish Rail. Peter joined British Rail in 1993 and has worked in a senior capacity in a number of organisations within the railway business. Peter became Chief Mechanical Engineer in 2010 with direct responsibility for the maintenance and overhaul of a wide ranging fleet of locomotives, wagons, carriages DMU and EMU trains operating freight, passenger intercity and commuter services across the network. As well as seven maintenance depots this includes control over the main works at Inchicore where wheelset manufacture and bogie overhaul and major repairs are undertaken to support the fleets.

FIONA DOLMAN: DIRECTOR OF CAPACITY PLANNING - GROUP STRATEGY, NETWORK RAIL

Fiona Dolman joined the rail industry in 1995 and has worked in operational and strategic roles in stations, customer management and planning. She has a track record of leading and implementing successful business change initiatives including the adoption of three new stations in 2002, the restructuring of Network Rail in 2004 and programme management of the devolution of Wessex, Kent and Anglia. In 2012-2013 Fiona held the responsibility of Interim Director of Operational Services, responsible for a £700m investment portfolio supporting operational policies and driving forward the implementation of operational safety and performance. Since 2012, she has been accountable for capacity planning and transformation of access planning.

CHRIS NUTTON: PROGRAMME DIRECTOR, FIRST TRANSPENNINE EXPRESS FIRST GROUP (TPE)

Chris Nutton is responsible for planning and major projects. With 15 years of experience in the industry since joining First as an Operations Graduate trainee, he has experience across operations, planning, train crew management and commercial, including a role as Head of Performance for Northern Rail and a similar role at Virgin Trains for three years. Chris recently led the development of operations and fleet plans for First’s bid for the new franchise, building on his experience from introduction of new timetables and fleet at TPE and its collaboration with Network Rail.

TIM COFFEY: HEAD OF INDUSTRY SYSTEMS INTEGRATION, GWRM WESTERN ROUTE, NETWORK RAIL

Tim Coffey is a Chartered Civil Engineer and a Professional Project and Programme Manager. His experience over the last 26 years has been both contractor and client side. He has led a number of complex investment projects and programmes in challenging stakeholder environments in the transport sector, focusing mainly on aviation and rail. Tim’s current role combines programme management, systems thinking and a desire to see ever more collaborative working across the rail industry.

KEITH FOLEY: HEAD OF THE NIGHT TUBE PROGRAMME, LONDON UNDERGROUND

Keith Foley has been the Head of the Night Tube Programme at London Underground since conception of the service at the start of 2013 and has overseen the programme which has introduced all night services to London. Keith has held numerous positions in the organisation including sponsor for the development of the new air-conditioned, walk-through trains now in service on the sub-surface lines and Olympic Programme Sponsor. As Head of Transport Planning, Keith was lead witness at the public enquiry for the planned Croxley Rail Link in 2012 and has been involved in major service improvement programmes across the organisation during his 19 years at London Underground.

MARK GILBEY: PRINCIPAL ENGINEER, PARSONS BRINCKERHOFF

Mark Gilbey is a Mechanical Engineer and a specialist in tunnel ventilation. He has worked for WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff on tunnel ventilation projects for 17 years and is their European Head of Discipline for tunnel ventilation. Prior to joining WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff he worked for an M&E Contractor for 11 years. His rail project experience includes HS2, London Underground’s New Tube for London and Cooling the Tube Programmes, Marmaray Project in Istanbul, East Side Access, Amtrak East and North River Tunnels, the Tseun Kwan O line extension in Hong Kong and the Jubilee line extension in London.

DAVID GALLOWAY: SENIOR ENGINEER TRACK AND CIVILS, NETWORK RAIL

David Galloway has 15 years of experience in the rail industry, covering significant track and civil engineering roles for both contractors and Network Rail. He has led innovative work in the field of railway gauging and contributed to research in track and civil engineering. David represents the infrastructure manager at the Vehicle/Structures System Interface Committee and leads Great Britain’s input for infrastructure in drafting of the Railway Gauging Euronorm. Recently, he co-authored the Engineering elements of the Platform Train Interface Strategy with Bridget Eickhoff, RSSB’s Professional Head of Infrastructure.

GEOFF HOBBS: HEAD OF TRANSPORT PLANNING, TRANSPORT FOR LONDON RAIL AND UNDERGROUND

Geoff Hobbs is Head of Transport Planning for Transport for London’s Rail and Underground division covering London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway and trams. He is responsible for planning, development and justification of ideas to improve TfL’s rail networks. He also leads TfL’s input into the development of the National Rail network in London more widely, setting out TfL’s priorities for change. This is articulated in documents such as the London Plan, Mayor’s Transport Strategy and Infrastructure Plan 2050. An economist by background, he has 20 years of experience in public transport, having previously worked in various strategic, marketing, policy and general management roles for Transport for London.

CHRIS SEXTON: TECHNICAL DIRECT, CROSSRAIL LTD

Chris Sexton was commissioned from Sandhurst into the Royal Engineers where he spent the next 30 years in engineering, leadership and staff appointments around the world. He served on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, and is an alumni of the Indian National Defence College in New Delhi. Military appointments included policy adviser to the Chief of the General Staff, Director of Army Recruiting, CEO of the Royal School of Military Engineering and Chief Engineer of the Army. Chris left the Army in 2007 to become Head of Engineering for Laing O’Rourke (Europe) where he led a business-wide review of the engineering function. He joined Crossrail as Technical Director in January 2010.

GILES THOMAS: TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, HS2

Giles Thomas has responsibility for the day-to-day leadership and running of the HS2 Technical Directorate and is a Chartered Engineer. In 2002, he worked for the Government as their European Technical Director. He represented the UK in Europe on rail technical and safety matters and was the UK Board Member of the European Rail Agency. In 2007, Giles joined Network Rail where he developed the Train to Infrastructure Interface Specifications for Thameslink and Crossrail rolling stock procurement programmes. Before joining HS2 in July 2014, Giles headed up Network Rail’s System Integration team working for the Department of Transport.

STEPHEN PAULING: TRANSPORT PLANNING MANAGER, CROSSRAIL 2

Stephen Pauling is Transport Planning Manager for Crossrail 2, leading the work on planning the next Crossrail line for London. Crossrail 2 will be a new underground rail line that will link Wimbledon to Tottenham via Victoria, Tottenham Court Road and Euston that is designed to underpin London’s growth. Before commencing work on Crossrail 2 in 2010, Stephen was part of the TfL team responsible for drafting the Mayor’s Transport Strategy. Prior to joining TfL, Stephen led the transport planning team at the London borough of Havering, and before that, worked on rail matters for Nottingham City Council.

MIKE BROWNSWORD: PRINCIPAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING CONSULTANT, ATKINS GLOBAL

Mike Brownsword gained his PhD in Risk Management from Cardiff University in 2009 and his Master’s degree in Electronics and Computer Science from Swansea University, since when he has spent over 15 years working as a systems engineer in a wide range of industries including rail, defence and aerospace. He has authored books and presented numerous papers for conferences and journals. Mike is a Team Lead and Principal Consultant for Atkins, having responsibilities for SE competence and providing Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) leadership in rail projects. He is also a Chartered Engineer and Member of the IET and INCOSE.

TONY LIGHTFOOT: LEAD SYSTEMS PERFORMANCE ENGINEER, LONDON UNDERGROUND

Tony Lightfoot is responsible for the Ventilation, Cooling and Power (VCP) Performance Engineering team. Tony has over 10 years’ experience in Tunnel Ventilation Engineering & Modelling and 6 years’ experience in DC traction power network modelling.

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