With its innovative rail project running three years behind schedule, Crossrail was unclear about what needed to happen to finally achieve “done done” status. Its team needed to uncover which activities should be prioritised and in what order, as well as what risks they might encounter ahead. The stakes were high, with each day of delay costing £3M.
The Challenge
Crossrail (now known as the Elizabeth Line) was a first-of-its-kind digital railway project that sought to move more than 200 million passengers per year across London. Due to a number of unexpected setbacks and delays, the project was three years delayed as it entered its final stages. As a result, Crossrail needed to hit a tight set of deadlines to start Trial Running while the final works to its stations were completed, eventually leading to the final phase of Trial Operations.
Meeting these milestones on time would require eagle-eyed tracking on multiple fronts, including completion of physical works, safety and handovers assurance documents, timely decisions, and regulatory signoffs.
Crossrail had a number of data systems, trackers, and specific dashboards in place, but it needed a single platform to consolidate and triangulate existing sources of fragmented information into a holistic dashboard with forward-looking information. This dashboard would help them answer the following questions:
- What needs to happen between now and the end of the year?
- Are we hitting the required run-rate to accomplish our plan?
- What decisions need to be made?
- What documents need to be produced?
- Who is responsible for what?
- Where is management and project team attention required?
- Where might additional resources be needed?
The Approach
Crossrail implemented Foresight with the overall aim to glean actionable analytics from its numerous data sources, including Primavera P6, Enterprise Bridge, run rates, punch lists, assurance documents, and more. Foresight met this aim by delivering the following:
- Automation tools that consolidated Crossrail's existing data into useful dashboards that became the basis of analysis and strategic thinking
- Presentation of key upcoming events/milestones and other insights in the form of Activity Cards to guide project planning and prioritisation
- Tracking of document flows, decisions, physical works, responsibilities, and regulatory signoffs
- Configurable alert system for areas of risk and items requiring senior management or project team attention
The Results
With the help of Foresight, Crossrail achieved a number of positive outcomes that accelerated project delivery, including:
- A daily progress tracker assigned to relevant people using Foresight's Activity Cards functionality
- Daily "fire drills" around core issues surfaced by these Activity Cards
- An optimised project schedule with items sequenced according to the "T-12 week" protocol of cascading acceptance criteria
- Automated reporting that increased report cadence from monthly to daily and eliminated time lost to unnecessary "data arguments"
- Improved team performance and productivity
400% Increase in the project's run-rate (number of items completed per day)
This meant that the forecasted opening that some models predicted to be as late as Summer 2023 could be brought forward to Spring 2022. The ROI of such time savings was staggering, with each avoided day of delay saving Crossrail £3 million.
With the help of Foresight, Crossrail was able to open the new rail line ahead of the Queen's Jubilee as originally intended.
About Crossrail
Crossrail, now known as the Elizabeth Line, is a 73-mile railway line running east to west across London, UK. The project increased capacity for central London's rail network by 10% and brought an extra 1.5 million people within 45 minutes of central London.
About Foresight
Foresight's construction project management platform helps owners and contractors deliver major projects on-time and on-budget by automatically identifying priorities, risks, and action plans in Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project schedules. We place the schedule at the heart of project execution, enabling project managers, controllers and schedulers to make data-driven decisions. Leveraging Al, machine learning and natural language processing, Foresight unleashes predictive insights about delay risks and work prioritization. Our secure, scalable and user-friendly platform revolutionizes your planning and execution by creating proactive 'look-ahead' action plans, igniting dynamic collaboration, staying head of risks, learning from past projects, and enhancing schedule visibility/reporting.
