(28-04-2010, 06:58 PM)PJW Wrote: a) Describe the principal activities which would take place during the commissioning period.
[5 marks]
The use of a list of items [IP] was good but perhaps there should have been a bit more detail on each (as it said "describe"). In particular item 5 was too brief. Worth recognising that briefing would be before possession taken and that signalling disconnections as well as possession are likely to be involved and may well also need to be a traction power isolation.
The [JF] answer did give a bit more re the likely activities (changeover, function testing and Principles testing) although I'd have added a bit more detail than that- there is almost certainly through testing, correpondence testing and in particular testing at the fringes of whatever is new. I can't make up my mind whether the bit about shortfalls and outstanding Test Logs is valuable here- it is certainly true but I think there were other bits that I'd have expanded rather than this.
The [JB] answer was very brief. Perhaps as the industry in UK moves to modular signalling this scale of work may be possible within 36 hours, but currently it certainly looks pretty "ambitious" (translation = foolhardy). There certainly won't going to be much time left to test anything if at the beginning of the possession the UTXs are being dug and the REB craned onto site- it would certainly need to be "plug and play".
Perhaps this is a reminder that none of the answers gave any indication of the context of the environment / railway / scale of work being discussed.
Also no-one mentioned any data changes to anything; even on RRI there would be changes to TD and other ancilliary information systems. Similarly no one mentioned any Telecomms changes or P'Way activities. At least [JB] did think about the signaller's interface and power supply.
I reckon that for 5 marks you need to expect to write for 5 minutes and hence that may be a list of 10 "one liner" items or perhaps 5 broad category items with a bit more of a description or indeed a sub-list of for e.g. all the separate categories of testing activity. Obviously it depends on your handwriting but I'd be expecting around half a page.
PJW