Demand Risk in Transport Infrastructure Projects

This memo is in regard to the recent proposal of leasing or buying the bi-level and tri-level Auto Rack equipment for Burlington Northern Railroad Company. As indicated before, this equipment is a great investment for our company as it exceeds our company’s 20% hurdle rate and therefore investing in them would be a great decision for the company. Hence this memo will seek to explain the optimal way to finance this investment; in other words, this memo will try and

The intent of this analysis is to compare and contrast the cost structures for rail, motor carriers and air modes of transportation. Implicit in this analysis is the rapid adoption of intermodal transportation which is often optimized to specific logistics and supply chain objectives (Jennings, Holcomb, 1996).

3. How should the acquisition of MPIS be financed, taking into account the issues of control, flexibility, income and risk?

Most firms in the public transportation management market are aware of the transition away from traditional transit models. Tow of First Transit’s largest competitors, MV Transportation and TransDev, have invested millions of dollars in research to create the technology to broker delivery of this non-traditional mobility service. Both firms are well financed and have hired top industry personnel to lead these

Mike Parker is the US Infrastructure Advisory Leader of Ernst & Young Infrastructure Advisors, LLC, an affiliate of Ernst & Young LLP. Based in Philadelphia, he advises on finance, procurement, business strategy and public-private partnerships (PPP) for large-scale infrastructure projects and programs. Selected as one of Mass Transit magazine’s “40 Under 40,” Mike has taught workshops, written articles and served as a speaker at numerous transportation, infrastructure and financial forums.

Many risks are interrelated. Analyze the following compound risk: Unstable requirements with tight budget will likely cancel the project. Discuss the dependencies that exist between the two risks.

However, the uncertainty stemming from these financial aspects of construction should be at least mitigated or ideally eliminated with proper forecasting techniques. During periods of economic expansion, major capital expenditures will raise the costs of construction, and during periods of economic downturn these same costs may decline. In order to control costs, some owners attempt to use fixed price contracts so that the risks of unforeseen contingencies related to an overheated economy are passed on to contractors (PM, 2012). Businesses must factor in that contractors will raise their prices to compensate for the additional risks.

The railway station is recognised as a fundamental part of the railway network in any location. This research will focus on the unique case study of St Pancras International Railway Station (SPIRS) which is a major international multi modal transport hub and termini in London. The Government over the next three decades is investing heavily in a modernisation programme of the aging railway infrastructure in England. This has been established in the investment in prominent and high value developments such as the London and South East projects, Thameslink, Crossrail and the national High Speed Rail 2 (HS2)

The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals ― while honoring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors. Portfolio management can be seen as providing governance structures adopted to minimize the overall costs in converting ‘‘input’’ to ‘‘output’’ through projects. When viewing projects as transactions, these costs are known as transaction costs, which are the sum of all costs for governing projects. Several researchers, such as Müller and Turner (2005) and Blomquist and Müller (2006), have proposed that the transaction cost economics theory (TCE) provides one theoretical framework for explaining the project and portfolio phenomenon.

In order to identify the optimal booking policy we have conducted simulation with 40 different booking levels for business and economy. As these two variables are independent, we have conducted consequential analysis. Results for business class level booking are in (figure 3). The detailed information about tested values is in Appendix B.

In this paper, an extensive literature review is undertaken to evaluate the importance of risk allocation to project stakeholders and discuss current practices. However, the complexity of this topic is beyond the scope of this paper. Hence, the attention is towards the direct participants, even though other stakeholders will also be tangentially mentioned. Also, as PPP is developing fast in the area of project finance and its importance is increasing, I have used it to illustrate some of the points made in the current risk allocation practices.

This assignment is included in the 2014 session of the Risk Management module of the MSc in Project Management course at University of Aberdeen. The main purpose of the assignment is to demonstrate my understanding of the issues involved in Risk Management and how they are applied in my current Project environment. The assignment is split in to two questions as detailed below.

The completion of any project depends on the execution of various parameters mostly set at the beginning of the project. In order to complete the project to satisfactory levels, the project must be completed within the stipulated timelines, fall within the approximate budget and be of the required quality standards. However, most of the projects are affected by adverse changes and unforeseen events that occur during the execution period. Research shows that the magnitude of change is dependent on the size of the project, with large projects experiencing more uncertainties due to several factors including; planning and design complexity, interest groups having deferring opinions, resource availability, Economic and political climate and statutory regulations, which may necessitate change of plan. Most of the uncertainties are known to occur in the concept phase and if not intervened, they may affect the entire project. The burden falls on the management of such risk as some managers choose to ignore the uncertainties since they call for additional costs. Other inherent risks may go unnoticed and therefore remain unsolved,

The research takes a case study approach. The case study analysis dwelt on risk management by Contractors who work on energy and utility construction projects, including strategies and supporting structures for managing risks, complete with an analysis of how these strategies and structures are implemented and supported by the Contractors resources base. The researcher specifically chose utility contractors for this study as the Energy and Utilities sector play an indispensable role in the global economy and in the UK, industry employs around 2% of the UK workforce (AGCAS, 2012). Moreover, the UK government identified the Utilities companies as companies that are heavily involved in risky incidents affecting their sector thus playing a crucial role in the preparation and planning for emergencies responsibilities (UK Government, 2013). According to Yip (2003) construction is risky as it almost always certainly involves loss of time and money. Above all, any denial of service during outage result in impact on communities (Lindman, 2008) and utility services are no exception. Against this background, it could be argued that contractors working on construction projects undoubtedly play a significant role in managing risks in order to stay in business.

As this table illustrates, many of the stakeholders are similar. However, there are significant differences in the asset providers and those entities with a direct financial interest. This variance drives major differences in the evaluation of investment in projects in either area, freight or passenger transportation. In freight operations, most often the assets are provided by private firms with a direct interest in the operation of freight transportation services on the asset. In most passenger transportation systems, the asset provider is a public entity, such as a transit authority.