Possession assessment and capacity evaluation of the Central Queensland Coal Network

This paper presents PACE, an optimisation-based Possession Assessment and Capacity Evaluation decision support tool that efficiently and effectively evaluates schedules of planned maintenance and renewal work for rail infrastructure, allowing users to quickly and comprehensively assess the work schedules against the competing objectives of asset reliability, resource requirements, and contract compliance. The development of PACE was commissioned by Aurizon; the owner, manager, and maintainer, of the Central Queensland Coal Network, the largest export coal rail network in Australia, to help address the challenges foreseen in managing this critical piece of infrastructure. In this paper, we describe the multi-commodity network flow hierarchical optimisation model underlying PACE and discuss how the tool facilitates the construction of innovative, end-to-end asset management strategies that safely deliver reliability and capacity at least cost.