Due to the urgent need for improved use of the railway infrastructure and increased capacity, infrastructure management and maintenance are vital criteria in ensuring performing infrastructure and safe transport. While trying to improve the maintenance activity and the management of the existing infrastructure, infrastructure managers review their approaches by outsourcing maintenance services which task both contractors and infrastructure managers.
The need for efficient maintenance is constantly increasing due to the structural changes and to the requirements of interested parties, used technologies, legislation and the business sector which change depending on market necessities. The sum of all these factors forms an obvious demand which results in delivering performing and efficient services for the development of the business environment. The launched challenges can be solved with the outsourcing of maintenance due to its benefits.
Apart from delivering quality and performing transport, the purpose of maintenance and the management of its purpose is to fully turn into account the availability and the quality of infrastructure at minimum costs by delivering proper maintenance services that add value to transport services.
For railway infrastructure managers, the outsourcing of maintenance services means changing mentality and a shift from set working hours for staff to costs, from rules and instructions to contractual specifications, from technology to business performance, from budgets to results on costs and quality, from the annual budget plan to multi-annual production plans. There are differences in the outsourcing level in Europe: if Netherlands is one of the countries which relies on the outsourcing of services, for other countries this is an unusual way to supply services or generally speaking, the costs of outsourcing remain unclear. But, notwithstanding the approach, the outsourcing of maintenance costs has the same positive aspects: benefiting from experience in delivering services, this segment is competitive and can offer enough capacity in the management of projects, traditional experience is completed with new work methods and good practices, services are carried out by implementing new technologies and address to the systematisation of information and contribute to more efficiently spent money. However, the outsourcing of maintenance is difficult as it is essential for the communities to adapt to new instruments and to gain management abilities, especially if we consider the fact that the outcome can only be seen in the service (not product) and the evaluation of key performance indicators is critical.
Thus, the outsourcing does not become an objective, but a way to improve ser-vices and infrastructure quality which requires the selection of an experienced entrepreneur. Also, from the point of view of the infrastructure manager, outsourcing maintenance services don’t mean reducing responsibilities, but only outsourcing tasks.
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