Working on an up-to-the-minute issue

Should the tram arrive at the east or the west side of the new public transport terminal in Utrecht? ProRail and the Utrecht Municipal Authorities cannot agree about this. As part of the Process Management module, students taking the 3TU Master’s programme in Construction Management and Engineering (CME) have devised various strategies for finding a solution. On Friday 16 January, they visited ProRail to present their recommendations to the parties concerned.

Utrecht Central Station is to undergo fundamental renovations in the next few years. The station is being converted into a High-Quality Public Transport terminal that will accommodate trains, buses, trams, taxis and bicycles under one roof. The specifications for the new terminal are nearly ready and ProRail is on the point of tendering out the building work. But one question still needs to be answered: on which side of the public transport terminal should the tram line between Utrecht and Nieuwegein be built?

Safety
The current tram line is on the east side of the station. The design for the new terminal building shows the tram line on the west side. The Utrecht Municipal Authorities were originally happy for the tram line to be relocated. But this changed when new plans emerged whereby the intended fast connection between the station and the university campus ‘de Uithof’ would be serviced by a tram instead of a bus. Building the tram line on the east side would make it easy to connect the future tram service to ‘de Uithof’. Furthermore, tram passengers would have less far to walk to reach the city centre. ProRail is also in favour of linking the tram lines, but is sticking to the original plans. Safety is the foremost reason. According to ProRail, the east side does not provide the room needed to build a platform wide enough to be safe for passengers to get on and off the tram without getting in each other’s way.

Opportunities
“We have been in discussion with the Municipal Authorities about a solution since late 2007”, explains Marc Unger, project leader for the public transport terminal with ProRail. “In September 2008, my colleague Marieke Koopmans was approached by Joop Koppenjan and Ellen van Bueren from TPM asking whether we had an interesting case for their module on process management. They were looking for an up-to-the-minute case that would prove a challenge to the students. Koopmans suggested the tram problem and despite the sensitive nature of the issue, I soon agreed that this was a good idea. I had always intended to involve students in the public transport terminal project, and could certainly see the opportunities this offered. After all, the students might come up with interesting process proposals and their involvement would reaffirm our commitment to the city and the tram.”

Deadlock
In early December, some fifteen students started working on the case in three tutorial groups. Their assignment was to formulate one or more process management strategies to end the deadlock. The condition was that the strategies had to be acceptable to all parties. To come up with a recommendation, the students studied the documentation that ProRail had collected and interviewed representatives from all the parties concerned. This eventually led to three different recommendations, all of which were presented during a meeting at ProRail.

Words of praise
The meeting generated a great deal of interest, and was attended by representatives from all the parties involved in the debate on the tram line. The recommendations were enthusiastically received. Marc Unger spoke words of praise. He was impressed by the high standard of the recommendations and the analyses, which had been compiled from a range of perspectives. The advice that was given only served to confirm his opinion that good process agreements were essential. The process proposal put forward by the second group was a real eye-opener to him. This group recommended that the protagonists of the eastern version should come with a good alternative for those who supported the west side, and the western protagonists should design an alternative proposal for the east side supporters. The alternatives should be assessed on the basis of a clear set of criteria. Other parties present also reacted positively to this idea. The project manager Loek Waterreus from the Municipal Authorities, for example, wearily asked himself why this presentation had not been held in autumn 2007.

Inspiring
“I hadn’t expected all those positive reactions beforehand”, says Nikki Oude Elferink, one of the students. “When we started the assignment, I had trouble working out what would be realistic and how we should translate the information into a strategy. We learned as we went along. Before the presentation, we had no idea of how our recommendations would be received. It’s so inspiring to see that people are interested, that they react enthusiastically and acknowledge that we have a number of really good points.”

Joint Master’s programme

The Master’s programme in CME is provided by a collaboration of the three Universities of Technology (3TU), and was launched in 2007 in response to the Construction industry’s need for a new breed of professionals. People who are not only technically trained, but who also have good communication skills and the ability to solve problems and manage change processes. The Faculty of CEG developed the Master’s programme in partnership with TPM. TPM is responsible for teaching modules such as Project management and Process management. Programme manager is ir. Jules Verlaan, tel. +31 (0)15-278467, e-mail: j.g.verlaan@tudelft.nl