Ramverk för en drift- och underhållsstrategi ur ett regelstyrt infrastrukturperspektiv

Sammanfattning: Managing the Swedish state railways is a complex task where internal and external factors must be taken into consideration at the same time as demands for efficiency are made by owners, customers and end customers. Banverket (‘The National Swedish Rail Administration') was formed in 1988 by the Swedish State Railways, a public service corporation, being divided into an infrastructure unit, Banverket, and a transport enterprise, SJ (‘the Swedish State Railways'). At the time of the division the infrastructure facilities were in urgent need of repair and renovation. To begin with, rule-governed and timetabled work was done, so-called predetermined maintenance, but in the mid-1990s it was decided that Banverket should introduce condition based maintenance in combination with predetermined maintenance. The next change came in 1998, when Banverket was divided into a client and contractor organisation. This internal contractor organisation has gradually been exposed to competition as from July 1 2001. From that date the remedial work has tended to increase at the cost of the preventive work, and a new active operation and maintenance strategy should therefore be worked out.The present study aims at identifying, investigating and describing the external and internal factors that affect the chances of forming an active strategy for operation and maintenance that is in line with the overall goal of the activities. With the aid of a framework, their mutual relations and the interplay between them may be described. The intention is that the framework should be possible to use in order to describe how an active strategy for managing the infrastructure of railways can be formed.The research work may be divided into four parts. The theory of maintenance, strategy and framework is studied in the first part. On the basis of this, a survey of the current situation is made. In the second part an analysis is made in which the current situation is compared to the theory, and deviations are observed. The third part consists of an experiment running through the first and second parts. In this experiment an attempt is made to identify operation and maintenance goals on the basis of Banverket's overall goals, then to link up these to the way in which Banverket plans and performs operation and maintenance, and finally to compare these to factors that turn the focus from costs to value increment. The results and conclusions of the analysis are discussed in the fourth part.The analysis results in a proposal for a framework showing what external and internal factors should be considered when forming an operation and maintenance strategy. The framework shows that the maintenance strategy should be in accord with the budgeting and purchasing strategy and points to the important areas of cooperation between transport operators, entrepreneurs, and the internal producer of a trafficable railway, Banverket Trafik (‘the National Rail Administration Traffic').Efforts necessary for operation and maintenance should be demand-driven, but in the state railway sector the efforts are also controlled by official government documents and internal rules. This limits the railway administrator's scope for action, and a review of the rules should be started as a first step towards identifying the gap between demands and results.The framework points out the factors that the strategy must take into consideration and their mutual relations. Some of these are controlling factors that are difficult for Banverket to influence, e.g. the owner's demands, the railway legislation, financing by government grants, and political decisions. Other factors possess the flexibility to affect the result, and through long-term thinking these may be used to initiate the process of turning a reactive strategy into a proactive one.