REGISTER

Hugh Hunter MSc MBCS MIRSE Senior Consultant

Frazer-Nash Consultancy

We often read press statements slating a range of engineering projects for wasting taxpayer money. These are normally the results of failed or problematic projects which are cancelled, or projects which are having major issues and are suffering from features such as schedule overruns, project budget overruns or late variations to the scope.

These problems are often caused by:

• Ambiguity in the initial scope and requirements; and/or
• Requirements analysis not being performed at the project initiation phase; and/or
• The system requirements not having been agreed and signed off before the work begins; and/or
• Risk analysis having not been fully addressed; and/or
• Verification and validation of the system not being complete.

Systems engineering provides processes that are used to address these project problems.

A systems engineering approach is not often fully embraced in many rail projects. This is in stark contrast to most other engineering domains, which have now been through the discussion of the benefits of systems engineering and have embraced it, enjoying the benefits that it brings to their projects

This paper introduces the topic of systems engineering, addresses its benefits and shows that a systems engineering approach to projects can be used to reduce system development costs.