SIEMENS

Every year, millions of Muslims from around the world travel to Mecca, the holiest site in Islam, for the annual “Hajj” pilgrimage. The Hajj has always been a massive event. But in recent years it has grown quickly. The number of pilgrims visiting Mecca from foreign countries grew from around 1.1 million in 1996 to more than 1.8 million in 2011. It is difficult to accurately measure the total number of annual participants, but many estimates put this number at close to four million.

Moving millions of people over a five-day period creates immense logistical challenges, particularly with regard to efficiency and safely. Indeed, things have not always gone well during the long history of the pilgrimage. Equally important is creating capacity for future growth. With air travel becoming increasingly affordable, it is reasonable to assume that more of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims will participate in the Hajj in years to come. The final stage of the pilgrimage was, for centuries, conducted on foot. But with crowds growing in size, and increasing numbers of elderly and disabled people making the trek, Saudi authorities decided that the time had come to modernize a portion of the route. In May 2009, Siemens was awarded a contract to build a power supply system for the rail connection from Arafat to Muzdalifah and Mina, just south of Mecca. Siemens has been contributing to the development of Saudi Arabia’s transportation infrastructure since the 1930s.The rail project presented a unique challenge due to its extremely tight deadline — 17 months. For one thing, it was being built for the intense burst of traffic during the Hajj. For the rest of the time — more than eleven months of the year — the trains and tracks would see almost no activity. A similar fast track project in Guangzhou, China, had taken 33 months to complete. A project in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, was completed in a record-breaking 27 months.

50 Degrees — No Shade. In addition to these scheduling pressures, climatic conditions posed a major challenge. Mecca is located in a dry, hot corridor between mountains. Project Manager Ralf Börnicke has vivid memories of the extreme weather conditions. “Temperatures were often as high as 50 degrees Celsius. And then there were extremely heavy rainfalls. Construction work was very, very tough,” he recalls. Mecca’s status as the holiest site in Islam also presented unique demands. Visa requirements were complex and key personnel were not always permitted access to the site. Finally, the nature of the Hajj created unique technological and design challenges. Because of the nature of the events that comprise the Hajj, all pilgrims travel the same paths at any given time. Passenger traffic flows exclusively in one direction, first toward Mecca, and then back again. Therefore, both tracks along the double-tracked section had to be uni-directional rather than moving in a “loop” as in standard subway systems. The project was designed as a turnkey operation, consisting of nine passenger stations, with a total capacity of 72,000 passengers per hour per direction. In addition to two lines of track — an 18-kilometer Southern Line and a 20-kilometer track with an extended depot — the project also required its own power supply system. Siemens was responsible for delivering substations, switchgear, cable systems, diesel generators, and an overhead contact line for the entire route.

The train carriages themselves were provided by a Chinese partner, the China Railway Construction Corporation. Because of the project’s tight timelines, much of its design and factory testing had to be conducted in parallel. As the project proceeded, it became clear that many of the local government buildings and other facilities that the project depended on would not be completed on time. During the critical period in the early fall of 2010, there were serious doubts about whether meeting the deadline remained feasible. To formulate a clearer overview of the situation, Siemens conducted an internal analysis to see where things stood with respect to the November deadline. Default would be an enormous setback, triggering significant penalties that had been written into the contract, and jeopardizing future work in the Kingdom. This internal study predicted that finishing the job on time would not be possible. Based on a detailed analysis of the conditions and the time remaining, it simply couldn’t be done. “We were shocked,” says Börnicke. “But we decided to ignore our own internal analysis and to continue working even faster.”

Tight Finish. During September and October, the project relied extensively on shift work and night work. Rail projects are usually performed in a logical, pre-determined sequence. But with the deadline looming, work had to proceed around the clock, often with different jobs being performed at the same time. For example, overhead lines were installed while tracks were being laid or adjusted — an extremely difficult task. Even for experienced professionals like Börnicke’s Siemens team, this amounted to a completely new way of working. After an intense final few weeks, the Hajj was set to begin. And, remarkably, all stations opened on time. Trains up to 300 meters long traveled the route in less than 30 minutes — most of them at full capacity with 4,000 passengers on board. In fact, so many people were transported that the Chinese manufacturer of the rail carriages has applied to have the achievement entered in the Guinness Book of Records.