2009 – April – Bollard, Copperthwaite and Tooth – The Importance of System Intergration and Integrated Logistic Support in of Rail Infrastructure

Arran Bollard MMgt, Grad Dip MilSc & Tech, BSc Ansaldo STS Australia Pty Ltd Jane Copperthwaite BEng (Hons), CEng, MIET, MIRSE  Ansaldo STS Australia Pty Ltd Amanda Tooth BBus Mgt Ansaldo STS Australia Pty Ltd The rail transportation sector's systems are characterised by increasing complexity of technology and system operations, an extraordinary increase the need for higher capacity, a demand for reduced technical and operations risk and a requirement on system operators to contain and reduce system life cycle costs and effort. All this and a continued expectation for an effective, safe and available In Service Life of at least 20 years (and often more than 30)! The situation often is that systems engineering occurs as non-integrated activities at subsequent layers of organisational involvement, and the (often >30 years) supportability needs of that system or product are quite often not even integrated into the process of systems planning until the design and installation are fixed and / or completed. The effect of this is the emergence of risks that impact negatively on project execution / delivery in terms of time, cost and performance. The mistakes and failures during the project lifecycle can then set the conditions for an increasing cost to such metrics as availability, capacity, supportability, efficiency for around 3-4 times that period whilst it is in service. This paper examines the concepts and importance of the integration of systems engineering and supportability planning throughout the rail transportation system lifecycle.