A major metropolitan transport system needed to understand how a variety of potential outsourcing and restructuring strategies being considered might affect service delivery, both during transition and in the eventual end state. It was difficult to foresee how each strategy would affect dynamic interactions between fare price, ridership, investment, asset condition, and workforce capability. We helped narrow the number of serious restructuring choices by ranking options with a holistic analysis of likely impacts to key performance metrics and the risks.
Clarifying Strategic Choices
End-to-End Quantification of Performance for Restructuring Options
We developed a quantitative dynamic simulation model of the system and evaluated likely future performance under best to worse case conditions for each remaining option. We also identified the factors most crucial to successfully delivering each option. Our analysis showed that several different options could potentially improve system performance significantly, and that implementation risk should drive the choice from this short list of best options.
Collaborative Bid Support and Evaluation
Once the restructuring option was selected, private infrastructure companies were invited to bid to support the renewal and maintenance of infrastructure. We used our modeling framework to help our client explain key risks and expected success dynamics for bidders to consider. We also rigorously quantified key factors of interest to the bidders (e.g., long term profit) showing the impact of critical implementation issues. To support bids that would be better for both the client and the companies, we provided bidders insight into the causal factors driving system performance and enabled them to test strategies with a ‘management flight simulator’ before submitting bids.
Long-Term Policy Analyses
We supported the client in restructuring by identifying and quantifying implicit assumptions in each bidder’s plans. This allowed the client to challenge bidders on potentially overly aggressive or unrealistic plans. Our analysis helped highlight critical inconsistencies in bids and enabled an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of likely bid performance under a variety of potential future conditions.
