Project engineering a major electrification project

The author describes some of the engineering challenges faced by Projects that are embarking on the Electrification of existing Railway lines. The author principally concentrates on the wide ranging and diverse support that engineering provides throughout the lifetime of a project, in terms of developing the scope, defining and working with particular standards, dealing with the various interfaces both technical and managerial, commercial issues and bringing systems into service and resolving problems as they arise, These project areas are described in a time when very little new Electrification on existing lines has been provided in the UK over the past twenty years. In light of the reduced amount of electrification schemes over the past twenty years, the author investigates the future proposals to electrify large sections of the UK railway; specifically what is now required to ensure that they are engineered to meet today´s modern needs, and uses the author´s own project engineering experience on the Thameslink Programme and some lessons learnt from some recent enhancement schemes to identify key areas that project engineering designers and managers may need to consider going forward.