Case study - London Rail

Overview

In the first place, the £1bn East London Line Project (ELLP) needed to develop a suite of best-practice processes and procedures for managing the railway extension project. This was achieved by creating a user friendly and intuitive project management system, based on the TfL intranet system and available online to all staff and contractors. This system was called Isambard after the famous engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who, with his Father, built the Thames Tunnel. The Thames Tunnel continues to be used by the East London Line as it becomes part of London Overground.

Later, with pending major developments and extensions to the railway needed to support increasing passenger numbers and for the London Olympics, a similar approach was adopted at Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Thus DLR Isambard is the online project management portal for all business and project management processes, procedures and supporting information accessible by DLR staff and contractors.

The concept has now been extended across all London Rail operations through a single, integrated London Rail Isambard portal. This London Rail intranet not only allows access to the business and project processes and procedures, across the mode, but also provides a wide range of additional useful information for all staff.

Client Organisation

London Rail is the Transport for London (TfL) mode with responsibility for developing a more integrated approach to rail services across London. London Rail has responsibility for:

overseeing major rail developments, including the £1bn East London Line upgrade for London Overground

operating the London Overground services

Docklands Light Railway

London Tramlink

support during development of the £16bn Crossrail project and for operating the railway once in service.

Business Issue (ELLP)

Develop a user friendly and intuitive project management system which will enable ELLP staff and contractors to rapidly and easily access their processes, procedures and supporting information. To understand the overall framework and the interactions between their processes, contractor’s processes and TfL processes.

Solution

The work was conducted by Zygon and Atkins working in close cooperation with TfL and other stakeholders:

Establishing the scope of work in terms of identifying the key processes to be mapped and improved.

Developing a user friendly Business Portal based on TfL’s intranet system – ELLP Isambard.

Delivery of the project management system processes in the form of process maps.

The ELLP Isambard Business Portal and processes goes beyond just processes and includes an overall business framework, access to forms, templates, latest news, latest changes, master list of abbreviations and definitions, and help on how to use the system and much more.

Developments – Docklands Light Railway and London Rail

In parallel with developments on the ELLP, Docklands Light Railway was planning major extension works to meet rapidly increasing passenger patronage and for the 2012 Olympics. Accordingly, with Zygon and Atkins help, the model for ELLP Isambard was adopted for all business and project processes for Docklands Light Railway, to become DLR Isambard.

Subsequently the London Rail Isambard Portal has been developed. London Rail Isambard now provides access to the processes and procedures within each business unit – for example, ELLP, DLR, Tramlink, London Overground Operations – as well as generic processes applicable across the mode.

Client Benefits

The key benefits for the client included:

Saving of up to 80% of text compared with conventional text based procedures.

Business Portal and processes enable users to identify other supporting information such as forms, other associated processes, abbreviations, references, definitions, responsibilities; and further useful information such as staff and contractor telephone lists, railway performance data.

Enables users to find the information quickly and easily from a variety of perspectives. The interaction and dependencies of activities can be readily identified.

For staff and contractors to better understand the processes and, in particular, the key interfaces, leading to improved team working and relationships.

An overall framework of the processes is a baseline for process improvement and adoption of frameworks such as EFQM, Balanced Scorecard, Strategy Maps, etc.

“Independent, Flexible, Responsive and Good Value”

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‘Strategy Consultants in Business Performance Improvement’