The Southern Renewals Enterprise was launched as a transformational model for delivering planned and reactive rail maintenance works. Empowered contractors and integrated delivery are seen as the enablers of improved outcomes including cost-effectiveness, reliability and carbon reduction.
We’d argue that it’s the integrated delivery element that really drives value and delivers better outcomes. Two linked questions then arise: how integrated is delivery in practice, and how is it integrated?
Within FTE’s sphere of expertise the benefits of integration include faster, more economical and reliable delivery of project-critical steel fabrications. These include bridges over rail, highways or water, footbridges, and rail station structure repairs and replacements.
SRE’s transformational model has already proven to be a highly collaborative and engaging environment for FTE’s Intelligent Integration approach in delivering better outcomes. FTE has participated in and contributed to 34 SRE projects, over £5.4m in value, a portfolio that includes work on 11 scheme designs, 5 ECI appointments and 17 live project implementations.
Integrated Delivery – What Does it Mean?
How does integrated delivery work in practice when you have multiple organisations, perspectives and priorities? Truly integrated delivery means focusing on removing friction and fragmentation and taking full ownership of the outcomes. This is the ethos behind the intelligent integration approach we apply to all projects.
The most foolproof answer is to have critical technical expertise in-house, with no functional or organisational boundaries between survey teams, designers, detailers and fabricators.
Under FTE’s intelligent integration approach, designs are developed and detailed with the support of in-house specialists in survey and inspection, project management and fabrication. Any potential issues are addressed in a CAD environment using collective expertise, rather than at a late stage onsite, where it’s way more complex, time consuming and expensive.
The scope of FTE’s integrated delivery is broader still – our design team can also collect up the associated civils requirements including foundations, retaining structures, temporary works and services protection.
Early Contractor Involvement
FTE has supported the SRE with specialist support on many key projects to identify more efficient and less disruptive methodologies. These have included Port Creek Viaduct, Priory Road strengthening and Barnes Bridge – a rail over river structure and a four span intersection rail-over-rail bridge. These projects all epitomise integrated delivery in practice.
To understand more about intelligent integration and how it supports the SRE transformational model delivery, access our free information hub below.
