S7E155: Project Controls and Systems Thinking on Heavy Rail with Hezron Ricketts

In this week’s pod, we were re-joined by Hezron Ricketts to discuss Box to Box: the 'Black' boxes of Controls and Systems.

Director of PMO Services at CPC Project Services, Hezron has 19 years working in Projects and Programmes as well as building a consultancy business and business units.

Working across the construction, rail, defence to name a few, he enjoys the challenge of delivery and the importance of setting up projects and organisations for success.
Hezron has a passion for bringing technological and cultural change in addition to improving diversity within the project profession.

The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:

• The annual timetabling of trains is more complex than people give it credit for due to the number of competing priorities to maintain and upgrade existing assets
• Railway systems need to be engaged up to 20 years before a new train system goes live
• The building and maintenance of a railway system forms part of an overall national strategy. The new High Speed Rail line in the UK is about freight and capacity as well as improving journey times.
• Railways are cheaper to maintain than roads although rail asset maintenance costs increase every year the asset diminishes
• In countries like Australia, it has become easier to create flight paths instead of high speed rail because of the geographical considerations of the country where the majority of people live near the coast
• The testing and commissioning phase of major rail projects can rarely be shortened. Projects often try to shorten this when the earlier stages start to become delayed.
• Major rail projects are often backwards looking in their management reporting. There needs to be a step change to use forward looking indicators

Join us next time when we’re joined by Shane Forth to discuss Navigating the Project Control Landscape: A Journey Through the Decades and Beyond.

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