Early Stage Specification Process
Step 4: The Transition to Infrastructure
In order to progress meaningfully the next stage is to develop Concept Solutions and the accompanying relevant products.
Having identified that the requirements can only be met by changing the infrastructure there are some additional steps to undertake before initiating a project. This will allow some viability and feasibility discussion to take place in a level of detail that allows high level evaluation of whether the idea should become a project for further development and design.
It is recommended that:
- The aim is to size and scope appropriate solutions to meet the capability set out in the modelling report.
- The solution should be drawn up only in sufficient detail to confirm scope, show impacts and allow high level order of magnitude (OOM) costings for the necessary work to be derived.
- A concept solution should be an assured product in itself having gone through the necessary/appropriate engineering checks.
- The aim is to create appropriate concept solutions. Appropriate solutions bring together the funders’ conditional requirements, the surrounding conditions and a view of the best application of standards to achieve value for money solutions.
- Drawings only need to be in sufficient detail to allow the scope to be understood.
- Once the funder has selected the options to proceed into development the concept solutions can simply be moved forward to a greater depth of development and engineering without redoing the work that has already been done.
- The impacts of the concept, ITSS, analysis and modelling should be tested to examine the whole life impacts on the network and train operations so that judgements can be made about potential trade-offs.
- Consolidated Risk and Assumptions Logs should be created.
Assumptions and exclusions are often made at this stage because there is still uncertainty or a high number of unknown factors. Funders should take care to understand how these relate to the maturity or uncertainty of the stage.