01.11.06
A whole new way of planning rail projects
By Richard Ormerod, Construction Industry Manager, Asta Development
Rail projects are far better planned using Time-Location diagrams than conventional Project Management software, as companies such as Bechtel, Metronet, Grant Rail and First Engineering have discovered.
Time-Location diagrams are also known as Time-Chainage diagrams or a French-Diagram. Tasks are drawn as lines and shapes on the body of the chart. Tasks should not overlap, as this would indicate one process is working in another’s space at the same time – a physical impossibility!
This essential information is not conveyed by a traditional network diagram, as only the logical sequence is shown and there is no graphical indication of time or location.
The Gantt chart introduces another dimension graphically, and so conveys additional information about time, but still not about location. With the same information, when a distance dimension, is introduced, the clarity of information relating to the rate of production and clashes between activities are plain for all to see.
Consider this: if you were asked “when will you be working at the 2 mile mark,” you could only answer the question with a Time-Location diagram – this could be important in rail maintenance project that was going to affect a major railway crossing!
Software Tools
Traditionally, Time-Location diagrams are often drawn by hand using CAD or the graphical aspects of Microsoft Excel. They are laborious to create and even more laborious to change.
The closeness of much of the data to traditional Project Management software lead to small-scale software development projects taking data from existing systems, adding the start and end locations and drawing a picture of the result. They were static and rarely updated due to the small size of the local market.
This resulted in the first version of TILOS, released in 1998 by Asta Development GmbH. Since then it has been developed further and gathered a few thousand users and is now in version 5. Its arrival in the UK was delayed until TILOS supported the distance units of miles, chains and yards – essential for the UK rail industry!
TILOS Philosophy
The approach of TILOS is that it should operate in a wholly graphical way and give as good, if not better, graphical representation than any diagram produced in CAD or Excel.
TILOS also provides core Project Management functions directly, and has excellent data integration routes to take data both ways from popular Project Planning software tools, or even spreadsheets.
TILOS: Key features
• Two-dimensional planning based on time and location
• Scaled drawing of your project, linked to the project plan
• Includes resource and cost information
• Excellent presentation capabilities
• Data exchange with other major project management software, including Asta Powerproject, Microsoft Project ,Primavera P3ev5 and Microsoft Excel
• Monitor progress and create baselines
Customers
Customers using TILOS include Bechtel, Metronet, Grant Rail, First Engineering and Plasser & Theurer.
A TILOS license for a single computer costs £1,950 and a concurrent (i.e. can be shared by a number of users on a network) license costs £2,495. Full training and technical support packages are available.
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