dc.contributor.advisor |
Roy, Rajkumar |
|
dc.contributor.advisor |
Shehab, Essam |
|
dc.contributor.author |
Ling, Daniel |
|
dc.date.accessioned |
2008-12-15T14:59:51Z |
|
dc.date.available |
2008-12-15T14:59:51Z |
|
dc.date.issued |
2005 |
|
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/1826/3059 |
|
dc.description.abstract |
The aim of this thesis is to present a structured methodology which estimates Railway
Infrastructure renewal and maintenance costs when there is a lack of quantitative cost data
at the early stages of the project life cycle. Furthermore, this thesis presents renewal and
maintenance infrastructure cost estimating issues and investigates current Railway renewal
and maintenance cost estimating practice using an industrial case study approach.
A flexible design using a case study strategy is described as the most appropriate approach
to the successful completion of this study. Industrial case studies using workshops and
interview techniques are the primary sources of data whereas literature is used as the
secondary sources of data. Following the identification of Railway renewal and
maintenance cost estimating issues, a further review of literature leads to the development
of a hypothesis.
In order to investigate the hypothesis a structured cost estimating methodology is
developed which comprises four main stages: creating a project structure that composes the
goal, project criteria and alternatives; collecting the necessary data in the form of pairwise
comparisons made by a domain expert; producing alternative weights using a geometric
mean; and finally employing an algorithmic method using the produced alternative weights
and the known cost of one alternative per criteria. The model was implemented within a
prototype software tool. This provided a means to validate the proposed model using three
industrial case studies.
These results provide evidence that the application of a pairwise comparisons based
methodology to Railway renewal and maintenance cost estimating problems can provide
beneficial. The results indicated that twelve of the fifteen estimates produced by the model
were within the expected accuracy and therefore on most occasions prove the hypothesis to
be true. |
en_UK |
dc.language.iso |
en |
en_UK |
dc.publisher |
Cranfield University |
en_UK |
dc.rights |
©Cranfield University 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without the
written permission of the copyright owner. |
en_UK |
dc.title |
Railway Renewal and Maintenance Cost Estimating |
en_UK |
dc.type |
Thesis or dissertation |
en_UK |
dc.type.qualificationlevel |
Doctoral |
en_UK |
dc.type.qualificationname |
PhD |
en_UK |