The Controlling Mind

The concept of the Controlling Mind, an innovative approach to reducing the risk of delays to the traveling public for the railway, has been developed over time by Project Leaders.

The Controlling Mind, How it Works.

This approach has now been embraced by two Route Directors as an innovative approach to reducing the risk of delays to the traveling public, brought about by ill–planned, overrunning engineering works.

Typically, disruptive access to the infrastructure is agreed up to two years in advance of the works, and is generally requested either as a ‘maintainer’ or ‘project’ possession of the railway over a weekend.

Challenges.

Because access is such a precious resource, this possession is ‘advertised’, and other works are subsequently incorporated. There may be as many as 30 activities within a weekend possession, of different disciplines and owners.

Traditionally, there has always been an issue as to who owns and leads the integration process between what are often disparate pieces of work, begging the question who actually controls and ‘owns’ the access.

Our Solution.

Project Leaders have now brought a team together that does just that; taking responsibility for the integration and de-confliction of the works within a possession to reduce the risk of individual pieces of work conflicting with one another.

Decision making both before and during the disruptive access is streamlined, and it is known who the owns and controls the access.

Because the individual(s) have been involved with the planning, the consequences of changes to the plan are well understood, and informed decisions about changes that may occur during the delivery of works within the access are better considered.

The Controlling Mind also enables the following: better planning of works, planning of activities can be commenced earlier, encourages ‘Buy In’ by stakeholders, allows for better integration and deconfliction of activities resulting in more economic and efficient delivery.

Benefits.

The Controlling Mind approach is already paying dividends in both reducing overruns and the overall unit cost of delivery.