Rail scheduling consultant for stations, bridges and track
For rail owners and contractors: P6 schedule management, independent review and delay analysis built around track access, outage windows and host railroad operating requirements. We schedule new stations, rail bridges and trestles, and track production in active corridors, and keep the record straight when a promised window never opens.
Florida intercity rail, Orlando extension. Our scheduler ran owner's-side schedule, change and delay oversight across all four zones: an airport station, 35 miles of new corridor, a 129 mile upgrade in a live right of way, 37 bridges and 156 crossings.
What drives a rail schedule
A rail CPM built like a building schedule misses what drives the work. We build these gates into every rail network.
Station, platforms and track in one schedule
A station on an existing corridor is a building job, a platform job and a trackwork job stacked next to live trains. We build them as one P6 network so the governing path shows from day one.
The station building
Foundations, structure, envelope, MEP, vertical circulation and finishes, plus ticketing, wayfinding, passenger information and fare gates. Long-lead items (elevators, escalators, curtain wall, canopy steel) drive the back end.
Platforms and canopies
Platform foundations and edge, canopy steel, finishes, lighting and ADA tactile edge, all tied to final track alignment. Work next to active track is modeled on the railroad's calendar.
Rail connections to the existing right of way
Station tracks, turnouts and crossovers tied into the running line. Special trackwork, signal and PTC changes, host railroad cutover windows and testing can govern completion. We link them to the station and platform work and test which path controls revenue service.
Host railroad coordination
Right of entry, flagging, outage requests and the railroad's engineering reviews become real activities with real durations, and every window granted, moved or pulled gets documented.
Systems, testing and revenue service
Signals, communications, crossing activation, station systems, safety certification and the pre-revenue test period. These gate revenue service and get squeezed when upstream work slips, so they carry their own protected chain.
What the owner gets each month
An update and narrative that says where the governing path is, what moved, why, and who owns it. Knowing in March that the opening is at risk, not in October.
On rail bridges, production per bent is the schedule
Across Phase 2 of the program our scheduler oversaw the schedule for 37 bridges, including movable spans over navigable water. On a long trestle, production rate sets the critical path durations. We schedule by production and track bent by bent. When piles per shift drop, we recalculate remaining durations and test the effect on completion that update.
Ballast, rail and ties scheduled by rate and tied to milestones
Track is quantity work. The bid assumes a rate, the field produces one, and an honest schedule shows the second. We load track activities with quantities, track earned quantities weekly, and let remaining durations move with the real rate.
Tons unloaded, spread and tamped
Ballast train availability as a constraint, dump and spread rate by segment, surfacing passes to final profile.
Feet laid, welded and de-stressed
Rail train deliveries and staging, lay rate and weld rate tracked separately, de-stressing before the corridor can go into service.
Ties placed and fastened
Distribution ahead of placement, placement and fastening rate per shift, turnout ties tied to special trackwork deliveries.
Same approach for drainage, subballast, grade crossings, catenary and signal houses, so the owner, the GC and the trades work from the same planned rate, earned quantity and trend.
Grade crossings, maintenance of traffic and utility relocations run the same way they do on highway work: Roads and highways scheduling →
Systems integration is where time gets lost if it isn't planned
Signals, PTC, communications, crossing activation and station systems come together at the end, after the civil and track work and with the revenue date already set. Carried as a few long bars, they can hide the interfaces, testing sequence and durations that determine whether the remaining float is usable. We break them out early and tie them to the civil, track and vendor work that feeds them.
What we do on rail programs
Owner-side schedule review
Independent review of the contractor's baseline and updates, production trend reports, and a straight monthly answer on whether the opening date is still real. How we help owners →
Change management
Every change and directive priced for time as well as cost, with fragnets inserted into the current update so cumulative impact is measured, not guessed.
Claims and delay oversight
A contemporaneous record built to survive a dispute, and the delay analysis run on it when one comes: retrospective under AACE RP 29R-03, prospective TIAs under RP 52R-06.
Scheduling and schedule management
Baselines and monthly P6 management built around access windows, outage calendars, phased cutovers and production rates, with plain-language narratives.
Coordination in active rail environments
Sequencing around live operations, access requests, flagging and third-party approvals, and documenting it when the railroad, a municipality or a utility takes your window.
Interim or embedded scheduler
Need a rail scheduler for 18 months, not a hire? We embed with your team, run the schedule, and hand off a clean network at the end.
On a rail job, operations always win
When operations pulls a window, a flagger doesn't show, or a permit sits with a municipality, the work slips and the next window may be weeks away. Who carries that depends on the contract and the record, so the schedule has to plan for it and the record has to show it.
More on compression and stacked work: When schedules get compressed →
Phase 2, zone by zone
Schedule, change and delay oversight across the Orlando extension of a Florida intercity rail program. Contractor names withheld, references available on request.
Orlando International Airport station and maintenance facility
An intermodal station at MCO, a 138,000 SF vehicle maintenance facility, and double track under active airport taxiways, where airport operations set the work windows.
35 mile new rail corridor
Three million CY of excavation, 865,000 SF of MSE walls, 18 new bridges and arch tunnels beneath active roadways, with shoofly phasing and I-95 roadway work woven through the rail sequence.
129 mile Class VI high speed upgrade in the FEC right of way
Phased upgrade in a live corridor shared with FECR freight: 156 crossing upgrades and 19 bridges including movable spans, sequenced around track access, outages and cutovers.
Change and delay oversight across every zone
Fragnets and time impact analyses on changes, production trending on structures and track, and one record across contractors and zones that answered "where are we and why" with the schedule.
Questions we get on rail work
Building a station, a bridge or a corridor? Let's look at the schedule
Send the baseline or latest update. In 20 minutes we'll look at your access constraints, production records and decision deadlines, and scope the review.