CONSTRUCTION RECOMMMENDATIONS

I. Reduction of Construction Period  

In order to reduce the period of railway siding construction you may start particular works (such as offset of communications, heaping of roadbed, etc.) immediately after obtaining technical specifications and selection of tie-in-point. It is proved on practice that parallel construction and designing of track may reduce the total period of construction up to six months.

However, it violates the existing legislation for, as a rule, construction license is yet not obtained by the customer. Therefore, it should be understood that the construction organization may only start construction works if the customer undertakes to settle all penal sanctions matters and interact with supervising authorities.

Construction within the borders of the railways allotment area may be officially started without the construction license after approval of the project by the Railways engineer-in-chief.

II. Reduction of Costs:

1.    Saving upon obtaining technical specifications.

It should be borne in mind that each coordinating party tends to specify as many encumbrances as possible in order to improve its own economy. As a result cost of the construction may increase a severalfold. To avoid the above it is recommended that the person obtaining such approvals should have an experience of work in the railways sphere and understand, which encumbrances are obligatory and which may be avoided. In case there is no such a person in your company it is recommended to delegate the powers of obtaining and coordinating of technical specifications to a specialized agency.

2.  Saving upon construction agreement.

It is recommended that the construction agreements be signed and the materials be purchased within the period from December till March, when prices are minimal and fixed. In this case the price of the agreement may be fixed for the entire construction period (if construction is carried out within a year).

3. Saving upon selection of materials.

In order to reduce the costs incurred for railway siding construction and operational expenses in the future we recommend exploitation of used sleepers (preliminary remanufactured), used rails (of the first and second categories) and crushed stone of less than 1000 units mark for construction of track superstructure.

We recommend to lay new wooden sleepers in the areas with curve radius of less than 300 meters (due to impossibility to use concrete sleepers) and new power switches, as their service period is less that that of used rails and concrete sleepers. For example, the grid made of used rails and concrete sleepers may serve 50 and more years provided light traffic and low speeds. New wooden sleepers and bars together with metal elements of power switches only last 15-20 years.