Acmena’s integrated systems engineering, assurance and human factors expertise provides the technical backbone for the Sydney Metro rapid transit project.

Set to deliver 46 metro stations, twin 15.5km tunnels under Sydney Harbour and 113km of new metro railway across four new metro lines (North West, City & Southwest, West and Western Sydney Airport), Sydney Metro is Australia’s biggest public transport project to date.

Featuring extensive signalling and infrastructure upgrades, the project has been divided in to 16 delivery packages spanning the various upgrade, construction and tunnelling works.

In February 2014, Acmena was engaged to provide systems engineering and assurance support for the project. Initially responsible for the creation and management of internal business, scope and performance requirements, Acmena’s role expanded to the management of overall project requirements.

Developing a centralised solution

Using IBM DOORS, Acmena established a requirements management framework capable of managing the large volume of requirements, compliance information, hazards and controls. By creating a centralised repository, and configuring it to meet the project’s needs, Acmena was able to integrate key engineering programs and provide progressive assurance, in addition to critical visibility and traceability, across the project.

As part of its assurance services, Acmena also reviewed the Sydney Metro Northwest design against safety and RAM requirements, in addition to providing safety and RAM advice for the City and Southwest package.

Expanding the scope

In February 2015, Acmena joined the Sydney Metro City and Southwest project technical advisors to provide HF support to the reference and definition design phases in addition to developing the business requirements for the package. Working collaboratively across multi-discipline teams and stakeholders, Acmena provided HF input for the development of key deliverables, including station and facilities design and shared station operations at network interfaces. The team also supported Safety in Design and Hazard Analysis activities through the facilitation of various workshops.

Acmena also developed an HF Integration strategy for the engineering and assurance programs, in addition to defining the evaluation criteria for stations and precincts, stabling yard, and Central Station upgrade across multi-disciplinary design teams.

In July 2017 Acmena joined the Sydney Metro West team to provide HF and systems assurance support to the concept design phase and is continuing to provide requirements management support to this large-scale project.

In December 2020, Acmena reached a significant milestone when it achieved complete traceability from the 153,287 contract requirements back to the 17,024 integration requirements.