IBM keeping the AU$11 billion metro tunnel on track

Rail Projects Victoria (RPV) has used IBM's Continuous Engineering technology to simplify the management for the delivery of the Metro Tunnel Project, the largest ever investment in public transport in Melbourne.

RPV is the Victorian Government body responsible for delivery of the Metro Tunnel. Construction involves four work packages, each delivered by multi-company consortia.

RPV oversees all aspects of the project including the planning and development of a reference design, site investigations, stakeholder engagement, planning approvals and procurement, through to construction delivery and project commissioning.

IBM "DOORS Next Generation on Cloud" is a Software-as-a-Service solution implemented by RPV to create a single, collaborative, secure environment to capture, trace, analyse and manage project requirements in real-time while preserving the data privacy and IP of individual organisations delivering the project.

As well as using DOORS Next Generation for everyday engineering requirements, a key functionality of the solution includes the integration of hazard logs and interface registers – verifying that the controls and requirements are accurately captured by the different parties.

Instead of gathering updates from disparate systems, the integrated technology enables a real-time, single source of truth that is securely controlled and selectively shared with each organisation depending on their functional areas across the project. This improves project agility, minimises reworks and increases reusability.

IBM ANZ MD David La Rose says, "The Metro Tunnel is a transformational project for Melbourne. The management of requirements for this incredibly complex engineering project is more easily managed through the use of DOORS Next Generation.

"As other major infrastructure programs come online around Australia, this continuous engineering approach is becoming the de facto standard.

The Metro Tunnel project will supposedly free up space in the City Loop to allow more trains to run to and from the suburbs, by taking the trains through a new tunnel under Melbourne.

It aims to create a new end-to-end rail line from Sunbury in the west of Melbourne to Cranbourne/Pakenham in the south-east, with twin nine-kilometre rail tunnels, high capacity trains, new generation signalling and five new underground stations.

The goal is to create capacity on the network to enable more than a half a million additional passengers per week across Melbourne's train network to use the rail system during the peak periods, creating a less crowded and more reliable train service in and out of the city.