SBRI: FOAK 2022 Optimising Railway Possessions

One of the biggest challenges facing the railway industry is the complex process of planning and possession management. The logistics of diverting, blocking, or closing sections of track can have implications across the network. As the rail timetable becomes more congested, with increased services, there is more potential for disruption and less obvious times for possession. Delays on main-lines could result in huge fines, consequently delivering works and handing back possession on-time is vital.

In 2020/21, NR spent £1.6bn on enhancements, £1.9bn on maintenance, and £3.2bn on renewals (Office of Rail and Road, 2021). This translates into thousands of engineering works, most of these require possessions to allow safe, traffic-free worksites for maintenance activities (e.g. remedial works, inspections, maintenance and planned renewals).

Possessions result in both planned and unplanned disruption. Unplanned disruption can occur for many reasons; machine faults, access issues, staff planning, or wrong engineering train arrangement - all demonstrating the complexity of planning possessions.

Getting staff and equipment to worksites on time and minimising travelling distances are critical efficiency requirements. The barriers to this are mutual road and rail points, staff numbers and equipment types. Furthermore, engineering trains typically start in sidings which may be in remote locations due to available sidings being occupied during large possession works. Consequently, this cause issues in both timetabling and plans that ensure that engineering trains reach worksites at the correct time and in the correct formation.

With increasing traffic and reducing availability of possessions this problem is likely to be further exacerbated. Network Rail have identified a requirement to develop solutions for planning procedures such that possession efficiency is increased, resulting in the delivery of infrastructure maintenance work with minimal disruption and cost.

Combining Frazer-Nash's deep experience in optimisation of railway challenges and eviFile's possession management solution, we will innovate to develop a product that will support rapid planning and replanning of possessions through the application of optimisation and ML algorithms to identify potential optimal plans. Using wide-ranging railway possessions data we will research and adapt algorithms that will consider (for example) multiple scenarios, locations and types of work, and optimise and efficiently manage resources to ensure minimal impact to infrastructure traffic and capacity.

This will deliver possessions more efficiently, help plan work-activities during possessions more precisely, manage infrastructure access more efficiently, allow tasks to be planned more efficiently, and predict the impact of possessions on overall network performance more accurately.