Welcome to the INCOSE Transportation Working Group
The Transportation Working Group’s (Transport WG) charter is to promote the development and tailored application of Systems Engineering (SE) best practices to ground transportation systems: with emphasis on roadways, rail, bus and metro, and including public and private interests and seamless inter-modal interfaces.

Within the field of ground transportation, we support INCOSE's mission to advance the art and practice of Systems Engineering. We are an international collaboration and our members represent Owners, Consultants, Suppliers, and Academics.

Systems Engineering (SE) and Transportation
Major challenges face ground transportation projects, including:

• Deploying new technology applications and managing their integration with legacy systems
• Managing requirements and changes in dynamic environments over multi-year project development cycles
• Defining systems verification and validation processes that ensure the Owner gets a system that performs as expected over its lifecycle

How to join the Transport WG:
We invite you to join the Transport WG and become part of the solution. We are working towards adapting SE best practices to benefit ground transportation projects. We convene regularly via webcasts and conference calls and meet at INCOSE International Symposiums and Workshops. We have activities underway to address the ground transportation aspects of SE issues such as:

1. Lack of SE Resources / SE Knowledge in the ground transportation sector
2. Need for common SE Terminology and Process & required Cultural Shift/Organizational change
3. Articulating the SE Value Proposition, Metrics & Benchmarking for ground transportation
4. In-Service challenges / Incremental Migration
5. Scaling the application of SE for ground transportation
6. External Communication & Outreach across ground transporation sector

We also collaborate with INCOSE Chapter groups active in the field such as the UK Rail Interest Group and UK Capability Working Group, along with industry groups such as APTA’s SE subcommittee and the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

There is no charge to INCOSE members to join the Working Group. If you wish to join or simply have questions, please contact the Transportation WG.

Members are also encouraged to keep in touch with one another through the Transport WG’s LinkedIn website.

Our Products
We are currently advancing the following initiatives:

• Soft skills knowledge & development for Systems Engineers and SE Teams
• Developing Systems Engineering knowledge in transportation – developing Transportation Systems Engineers and expanding Systems Engineering awareness
• Library of transportation Systems Engineering Case Studies
• Requirements best practice – Capturing Best Practice for Capturing Transportation Requirements
• WG Outreach – performing outreach to grow Transport WG membership and raise Systems Engineering awareness within transportation

• Systems Engineering in Transportation Projects: A Library of Case Studies – a while ago, we recognized that practicing systems engineers needed a library of case studies of the application (or sometimes the lack of application) of systems engineering to transportation projects in order to learn from the experiences of others and to make a case for investing in systems engineering. We have assembled such a library and we are continually adding to it. The full version is available to INCOSE members through the Connect site, however an edited version with one illustrative case study is available to everyone here.(Size 447 k)
• Building a Systems Engineering Capability (PowerPoint presentation) (Size: 3.79Mb)
• Building an SE Capability Flyer (Size: 417K)
• The Value Proposition for Systems Engineering in Railways and Transit for Engineering Practitioners (long version) (Size: 111K)
• The Value Proposition for Systems Engineering in Railways and Transit for Senior Management (short version) (Size: 9.8K)

Upcoming Events:
We are looking forward to these exciting events in 2011:

The International Symposium in Denver, Colorado, USA, scheduled for June 19-23, 2011 at the Colorado Convention Center. Full program details and registration information for this event can be found at http://www.incose.org/symp2011.

The Transportation Working Group has a program of events planned, including industry roundtable session, panel and paper presentations, a technical tour and networking events. View our full program.

Benefits of attending this event includes the ability to:

• Collaborate with industry colleagues practicing SE
• Exchange emerging best practices and experiences
• Interact with Industry Executives
• Share tailoring approaches to applying SE within rail/transit (organization, project level)
• Expand network of experienced SE practitioners working across many domains

Previous Events:

The 2011 International Workshop (IW11) was held in Phoenix, AZ (USA) in January 2011. At this event we hosted a series of workshops advancing transportation SE initiatives addressing current systems challenges. Kuldeep Gharatya, Colin Wood and Nic Plum (members of the Transport WG) were bestowed an INCOSE Working Group award for ‘achieving the Systems Engineering vision’ for their outstanding effort in developing TRAK – The Rail Architecture Framework. The recipients receiving their award from INCOSE President-elect, John Thomas can be seen here. From left-right: Colin, Kuldeep, John and Nic.

The INCOSE International Symposium 2010 (IS10) was held in Chicago, USA in July 2010. The Transportation Working Group presented the following papers: A blueprint for Effective Enterprise Risk management; In-service systems engineering; and an Initiative to Strengthen Guidance on the SE of Systems which are Already in Service: First Progress Report.

IS09 was held in Singapore during July 2009. The Transportation Working Group presented the following papers:

• Building a Systems Engineering Framework for London Overground using Experiences from the East London Line Project (ELLP) (Size: 368k)
• Automated Metro-Ensuring Safety and Reliability with Minimum Human Intervention (Size: 126k)

IS08 occurred in Utrecht, Netherlands in June of 2008. The following is a presentation made by the Transportation Working titled Tailoring Systems Engineering to Transit - Optimizing In-Service Systems. (Size: 3.27Mb)