Visualizing the End Goal in Rail Megaprojects

WSP Author

• Malcolm Thomas, Technical Director & Technical Discipline Lead, Systems Engineering, United Kingdom

It is universally understood that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Perhaps, though, 19th-century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev said it better: “The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book.”

In managing the delivery of large-scale rail programs today, pictures, or rather diagrams, are extremely useful in conveying complex information in a simple-to-understand way.

 One of the functions of systems integration (SI) is to provide program stakeholders with the information they need to make decisions at the right time. Visualizations help to create that clarity amid the complexity of rail programs.