Time Overruns in UK Railway Engineering Works - Research Proposal Example

Time overruns have been referred to as a plague on modern engineering projects as all types of projects are prone to time overruns. Time overrun refers to the variation between the estimated project duration and the actual duration of a project. Passengers in the United Kingdom usually cover a combined distance of over 50 billion. However, every 1 out of 10 trains fails to arrive at their destination on time or fail to arrive altogether. During the 2006/07 period, train passengers in the UK lost 14 million minutes in delays, costing about £1 billion in lost time. This gives us the problem under study and reveals that there is a need for corrective measures in order to save the government and common citizens money and time.

In December 2007, during the period before the Christmas holidays, sever major enhancement projects and renewals were planned for the national rail network. This period was chosen as passenger numbers during the holiday season are usually low. Various contractors were given the task to complete these projects so that the rail would be operational at the turn of the 2008 New Year. The project, however, experienced various times over-runs so that in January 2008, serious disruption of train services was encountered. The disruptions occurred in Rugby, Shields Junction, and Liverpool Street (ORR, 2008).

Time and cost overruns in government projects are many despite the fact that they inconvenience various stakeholders connected with these projects. These over-runs are diverse and their causes are usually interconnected and at times it is hard to narrow down the specific causes of these over-runs.

The engineering plan describes the complex decision-making process that defines and schedules various tasks within a project, from its inception to its conclusion (Pinedo 2009). An engineering, planning function should be able to estimate the resources needed for the project, the time needed for the project as well as any risks that may alter the estimated values.

Cost and time over-runs are usually a result of poor engineering, planning, or some failure within a developed engineering plan. In order to analyze cost and time over-runs, it is important to analyze the engineering plans developed for a given project and determine at what point did the failure begun or what aspects of the plan made it possible for failures to develop without being controlled.