Network Rail's international benchmarking programme, UK

Over the last 3 years the UK's Network Rail has conducted an international benchmarking programme, with quantitative comparisons to see how efficient it is and qualitative comparisons to identify best practice. This paper describes how the benchmarking was done, the variety of approaches that were used and how the resulting ideas for improvement were implemented. The problems inherent with using international datasets for top-down econometric benchmarking are highlighted, and also the care with which the results must be interpreted. Topdown and bottom-up findings have been reconciled through the benchmarking of asset management and project management capabilities.