Engineering Support

Delivering Value Through Capability

The term ‘engineering’ means many things to many people. So, supporting it can also take many forms. Arnmore’s engineering support involves the provision of specialist combined commercial and technical services to deliver a program of work.

When projects reach a certain size, they really stop being a project and turn into what is in effect a mini business, (sometimes not so mini). The control, reporting and delivery processes therefore need to reflect the needs of a business. This means the commercial and financial controls become as significant as the technical delivery and activity planning. Many infrastructure projects do not have with the right balance either because they were initially set up on the wrong footing or they outgrew their original structures. Keeping an appropriate balance of commercial and technical skills as a project progresses is essential to ensure quality of delivery.

Our experience and insight enables us to fully understand the issues affecting our clients, not only in today’s climate, but also future scenarios ensuring we develop solutions that deliver successful outcomes.

Engineering Support Success Factors

Requirements Understood

Performance Delivery
Systems Validation
Standard (CENELEC) Compliance

Risk Controlled

Delivery Uncertainties
Safety Management
Software Integrity

Certainty of Outcome

Reduce risk
Deliver on-time and on-budget
Assurance

Informed Client

Understanding of business impacts
Support decision making
Performance measurement of best in class

Core Engineering Support Services

We have specialist Engineering Support skills bringing together industry experience and academic experts to deliver bespoke solutions to clients that are planning, constructing, operating and disposing of infrastructure across the world.

Understanding what drives the performance of an asset is a complex undertaking. This is even more difficult with multiple interacting assets, for example, those that make up a transportation system. To be able to make consistent management decisions a business needs a framework by which it can plan and monitor the effects of improvements to its core assets. In the engineering arena standards such as the CENELEC standards have been developed to provide guidance on how best to approach setting up these frameworks. These standardised approaches help both the individual business in its optimisation strategy as well as providing consistency between organisations to allow industry-wide benchmarking activities to be undertaken.

The approach we take combines our knowledge of business operations with the ability to develop detailed models of business processes and engineering assets. Our aim is to produce quality asset performance information in a manner that is targeted at the key drivers for the business (or project). These models cover a variety of scenarios ranging from high-level cost modelling, risk and safety models, through to detailed engineering system reliability models. Linking these to the key business drivers then provides the framework for decision making at Board, Program or Project level.

It is easy for individuals to get wrapped up in the day-to-day workings of a business, getting jobs done on time and within budget is the lifeblood of business. An organisations safety processes need to support this delivery to ensure all aspects of health and safety law are applied to the works. Correcting non-compliances or worse still accidents resulting in injuries or fatalities need to be managed and limited or avoided. Safety Assurance is, therefore, the check that the controls around these risks have been designed, applied and are operating to the appropriate level of compliance.

Probably the most important aspect of implementing a safety regime within a business is for it to be led from above. If the Board members and senior leaders in the business are not signed up to the regime then it is likely to fail. We have provided safety mentoring and support to business leaders in across a range of industries.

The second most important aspect we believe is to have a structured and auditable approach to the design of the safety management system. The CENELEC safety standards have been developed to provide guidance in this structuring. For example, we have developed a number of safety cases in the transportation sector based upon the EN50126, EN 50128 and EN50129 standards. Using a structured approach also facilitates better measurement and audit of the anticipated outcomes.

Poor planning and project management certainly contribute to a poor technical delivery of a software system as do unstructured or disjointed engineering activities. The software industry has evolved numerous control measures to help the design of technical systems. Core products are normally put through stringent design and development controls before being released for use. However, on large projects, problems can arise when new products are interfaced to ‘old’ infrastructure and systems. For example, the introduction of a new train traffic management system into an existing signalling control infrastructure.

Software systems assurance activities provide a means of controlling the risks related to these types of implementation.

We have worked extensively on the integration of new systems into existing operations. This work has involved defining new operating models, building the business processes for these models through to designing the supporting systems and identifying and managing the risks related to their implementation. Our work has ranged from design and implementation of corporate asset management systems through to verification and validation of localised control systems. One key factor in ensuring the success of these projects has been the use of experts in the delivery who have deep domain knowledge in the delivery.

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Our Clients

We have supported some of the largest infrastructure projects around the world. By implementing a proactive approach and by applying our insight, experience and knowledge to generate innovative, sustainable outcomes we are able to provide our clients with both commercial and technical advantages.