Transportation services and projects are delivered by multiple organizations and therefore effective systems engineering on these projects must traverse organizational boundaries. Each of the organizations across this complex supply chain faces different issues – and therefore needs to tailor its systems engineering to cope with difficult problems. However, to deliver effective transport services to customers, this systems engineering needs to be integrated. So how do we systems engineer the supply chain to enable effective, cross‐organizational systems engineering? What roles should customers and suppliers take in the overall SE program? What are the key challenges we need to address to deliver the low cost, reliable, environmentally‐friendly, high capacity and safe transport services our customers want to use? The panelists will explore these questions from different perspectives – from designing national transportation infrastructure to building trains. We'll hear from five perspectives: For each perspective we'll explore: What are the primary systems challenges? Which aspects of systems engineering add most value? What aspects cause the greatest difficulty? What changes would make the supply chain more effective? Audience discussion is sought to explore: How does the experience of the transportation industry SE compare or contrast to other industries? Are the viewpoints of various contributors common? Are interdependencies being overlooked? National government's transport administration ‐ focusing on keeping people moving in our major cities and getting a decent return from investment in major enhancements Rail agency – focusing on integrating infrastructure, vehicles and command and control to deliver effective transport services Major rail system upgrade program – focusing on delivering major enhancements with minimum cost and risk Systems consultant – focusing on specifying the procurement of integrated systems to meet agency's business needs while navigating sub‐system supplier capabilities and systems integration risk Sub‐system supplier – focusing on delivering vehicles, infrastructure or command and control solutions that meet the market and specific customers need

Rail/Transit systems are effectively comprised of many layered and complex systems – hence a System of Systems (SoS). Upgrading, expanding and modernizing rail/transit systems becomes a complex endeavor as portions of a rail/network are modified and then must ultimately be accepted as a complete, operational system before being introduced/integrated back into the rest of the active rail network. The multi‐layered system acceptance creates challenges that relate to planning, modeling, contracting and deployment. SE practitioners across all industries are urged to join this SoS exchange based on rail/transit case studies and offer comparative or contrasting experiences from their domains.

After over 100 years of traditional design and construction, the rail industry is now tailoring Systems Engineering processes to cope with the complexities of its capital projects. This industry is attempting to accomplish in ten or fifteen years what has taken aerospace and defense 50 years to achieve—‐ that is, to embed an SE approach into the fabric of its business. Four panelists will share how their big, bureaucratic and very conservative organizations are transforming to meet today's challenges. They will describe how they are dealing with the driving forces of system interoperability and dynamic technologies and the restraining forces of severe SE competency shortages and institutional barriers to cross‐disciplinary teamwork. They will share how they are changing their contracts, design documents and procedures, and how they are adapting design tools and approaches to deliver successful projects and improve life‐cycle systems performance. These are the early chapters of an entire industry in flux.

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