/tilos/tilos-for-rail-projects/
Rail is the sector time-location scheduling was built for. Track renewals, overhead line and signalling work all progress down a fixed alignment measured in chainage, and possession windows — the specific hours the network is actually handed over to the contractor — make location every bit as important as date.
Why rail programmes need time-location scheduling
A Gantt chart can tell you formation work runs weeks 0–10. It can’t tell you which weekend possessions that work actually needs, or whether the track crew following behind is scheduled into a possession window that hasn’t been secured yet. A time-location chart puts chainage on one axis specifically so that question — where, and in which possession — is answered by looking at the chart, not by cross-referencing a separate possession plan.
What the chart above shows
Four disciplines — formation, track, OLE, and signalling & testing — each follow the one ahead of them down a 25 km alignment. The shaded vertical bands mark weekend possessions: the only windows in which trackside work can actually happen. Reading the chart, it’s immediately visible which discipline’s line crosses which possession window, and whether the planned rate is realistic given how few possessions are actually available in a given month.
Where TILOS fits into a rail programme
Rail programmes typically run Primavera P6 for the whole-project logic — design, consents, procurement, interfaces with adjacent contracts — while the trackside works themselves are built and maintained in TILOS, where chainage, sector profiles and possession-driven calendars are native concepts rather than a workaround. See TILOS vs Primavera P6 for the full comparison.
Who uses this on a rail project
- Planners maintaining the possession-driven TILOS model
- Project managers reporting completion confidence to the client
- Contracts and claims managers evidencing possession-related delay
- Engineers coordinating multiple disciplines sharing the same alignment
Book TILOS training built around rail possession planning. See corporate TILOS training →