Project Title: 
Developing an Implementation Framework for Railway Network Optimisation

Duration: 
3.5 years starting from Autumn 2014

Funding: 
The scholarship covers UCL registration fees and provides a stipend of £15,726 per annum tax free (2014/15 rate). Travel expenses and research equipment will also be paid for. 

Funding Body: Network Rail and EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Science Research Council) 

Vacancy Information: 
Applications are invited for one PhD studentship to work on a project that develops an Implementation Framework for Railway Network Optimisation. 

Studentship Description: 
UK Rail Industry has been supporting several academic projects on network management, operation and optimisation in order to achieve the goals set out by the Railway Technical Strategy 2012. Whereas the academic projects provide theoretical bases, their Technology Readiness Levels are relatively low so that a gap lies between this academic work and its implementation by the industry. The railway industry wants to know how academic work can be implemented and how it can contribute effectively to their objectives. The present project, funded by Network Rail Ltd and Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (UK), will fill this gap by developing a framework on the implementation of railway network optimisation work. 

The immediate benefit of this work will be to exploit the results of a substantial body of academic research that is currently established in hand and in progress. This will lead to methodological development in the industry that will realise opportunities presented by emerging technologies including information and communications technology. Ultimately, work of this kind will lead to specifications for future systems that will enable them to operate effectively taking advantage of available technologies operating in conjunction with the latest academic research. 

The project will start with a review of the literature on general technology development management as well as how the railway industry has adopted and implemented emerging methods/technologies in the past. Through stakeholder interviews as well as focus group meetings, the project will investigate the specific needs of network optimisation programmes of the rail industry. In addition, it will review the scope, assumption and potential implementation of recent academic work on network optimisation in the UK and abroad. Particular attention will be paid in this review to research undertaken by academic partners within the Future Traffic Regulation and Optimisation programme (FuTRO) in order to identify ideas that give rise to opportunities for early implementation. Whilst the project considers implementation issues in general and at the national level, it will select an area of the UK rail network where the specific needs and implementation challenges will be explored in depth. Effective development of academic ideas of this kind will depend on closed collaboration with industry experts who are fully aware of the requirements, opportunities and limitations that arise in practice. 

The project will then develop a more general implementation framework that: 
1) Identifies key academic contributions that have value for the rail industry 
2) specifies an approach for their implementation, 
3) shows a step-by-step guide for creation of action plans based on the approach and 
4) sets out an evaluation scheme for implementation of action plans. 
The framework will also allow the rail industry to make necessary decisions for the projects. It would include matrices of evaluation criteria identified. 

Finally, using one academic project as a case study, the project will create a detailed implementation plan and an evaluation scheme for it. The evaluation scheme will demonstrate the benefits of the project to the industry. Where appropriate, the project will apply the developed models to the chosen case-study area to investigate implementation steps after development of models, but this will be determined by the stakeholder engagement. 

Support: 
The successful PhD student would be closely supervised by the industry and academic supervisors. The student will be given a placement opportunity at Network Rail. At UCL, the student will be embedded to a UCL group on railway engineering and operations which includes more than 10 researchers. The student will also join UCL Resilience Research Group. 

Application Procedure: 
Applicants should send a covering letter and CV to Dr Taku Fujiyama [log in to unmask] by 18 August 2014.
Shortlisted applicants will be invited to interviews in the week starting the 08th September. 

The successful applicant will then have to apply online to UCL by submitting the PhD application form, available from http://www.cege.ucl.ac.uk/Research/Pages/default.aspx and clicking on the Apply now button. Please name Dr Taku Fujiyama as the proposed supervisor. 

Closing Date: 
18 August 2014