From Silos to Systems: How to Lead Multidisciplinary Engineering Teams Effectively
Large railway programmes are systems of systems — and unless engineering leadership treats them as such, delivery risks escalate fast. Silos between civil, track, signalling, telecoms, and environmental teams can lead to misaligned designs, conflicting priorities, and expensive rework.
Engineering leadership in this context must go beyond technical review. It requires an integrated mindset, deep cross-discipline knowledge, and the soft skills to bring diverse teams together around a common goal.
The best engineering leaders:
Understand the interfaces between disciplines and anticipate where conflicts will occur.
Encourage early, open communication between teams to resolve clashes before they escalate.
Lead with a mix of authority and humility — providing clear direction while listening to the insights of those closest to the detail.
Use structured assurance and review cycles to catch issues without slowing down progress.
To manage this effectively, leaders can implement:
Engineering Interface Management Registers: These registers map dependencies between disciplines (e.g. when signalling cable ducts must be installed after civils) and assign clear owners for each interface. Keeping them live and reviewed regularly helps prevent costly surprises, such as incompatible installation sequences or misaligned tolerances.
Digital Twin Technology (e.g. Autodesk BIM 360): Digital twins integrate models from multiple disciplines into a shared virtual environment. They enable early clash detection, visual planning, and collaborative resolution. This fosters mutual understanding among disciplines and improves handover quality between design and construction.
Weekly Technical Coordination Forums: Chaired by rotating leads from each discipline, these meetings promote shared responsibility and avoid dominance by any single team. Structured agendas and visual updates (e.g. via Navisworks or model walk-throughs) enable fast issue resolution and proactive planning. The consistent cadence builds trust and helps surface systemic issues.
Standardised Engineering Change Control Forms: These ensure that all technical changes are formally captured, reviewed, and approved with cross-discipline input. By logging change impacts on other disciplines, they reduce scope creep and avoid rework.
Design Integration Leads or Coordinators: In large or high-risk programmes, these roles bridge the gap between disciplines. They track dependencies, coordinate sign-offs, and provide continuity between design phases. These leads ensure integration is someone’s full-time job — not just a part-time concern for each specialist.
These tools and roles create a network of communication and control across teams. Combined, they shift a project from fragmented inputs to unified delivery. That’s how complex railway systems can be delivered predictably, efficiently, and collaboratively.
