Hero Metro Transit - Copperleaf Decision Analytics

August 31, 2023

Written by: Jess Carney Shaw

Copenhagen Metro’s Journey to Value-based Decision Making

Copenhagen Metro, the company responsible for operating the fully automated, driverless 24-hour rapid transit system in Denmark’s capital, recently selected Copperleaf® for optimised investment planning and asset management. The company needed a solution that would support complex investment decision making, taking into account strategic focus areas beyond just financial criteria, including customer satisfaction, sustainability, and capacity.

At the 2023 IAM Global Conference, Jakob Keinicke Sørensen, Director of Assets and Renewals at Copenhagen Metro, and Carsten Kessler, Client Success Manager at Copperleaf, delved into the challenges that led Copenhagen Metro to implement an Asset Investment Planning (AIP) solution and why the outcomes of asset investment planning matter.

Their presentation, titled ‘Value-based Decision Making at Copenhagen Metro: Driving Outcomes in Rapid Transit’, explored Copenhagen Metro’s journey to value-based decision-making and how the Copperleaf solution will allow the organisation to achieve sustainability goals, improve customer satisfaction, and keep the metro service reliable and efficient.

Jakob Keinicke Sørensen, Director of Assets and Renewals at Copenhagen Metro, presented some of Copenhagen Metro’s key performance indicators at the IAM Global Conference

Balancing Growth and Maintenance at Copenhagen Metro

Launched two decades ago, Copenhagen Metro initially achieved efficiency and high customer satisfaction rates. The network’s expansion with additional lines in 2014 and 2019, however, has led to the challenge of sustaining service levels. Serving over 300,000 daily customers, the ageing infrastructure and increased capacity have elevated the importance of investment planning and asset management.

Copenhagen Metro’s KPIs have also added pressure on the organisation to optimise investment planning. With strict targets for health and safety, sustainability, service availability, and more, the rapid transit company must ensure that its investment portfolio can meet these expectations and fulfill strategic goals.

Executing these reinvestments into the system is complicated by another one of the company’s goals—growing passenger numbers by 75%. Because Copenhagen Metro’s system is not subsidised, the company relies solely on the profit it makes from ticket sales. This means the organisation must grow passenger numbers from 100 million to 175 million per year by 2028—all while tripling the amount of reinvestments in the system.

This is complicated by Copenhagen Metro’s unique challenge of running 24/7: being one of only three metro systems in the world to operate all day, every day, the company must find a way to perform maintenance with minimal disruptions to its service.

These challenges have forced Copenhagen Metro to ask questions like:

  • How can we plan reinvestments in our system? Which investments will give us the maximum value?
  • Can we use our money in a smarter way? Can we extend the lifetime of some of our assets? Can we use some of our assets for 25 years instead of just 10 years?
  • How do we perform maintenance without impacting customer satisfaction? And at the same time attract 75% new customers to our system?

Carsten Kessler, Client Success Manager at Copperleaf, explained how Copenhagen Metro has benefitted from using the Copperleaf solution

Optimising Project Portfolio Management with Copperleaf

Copperleaf Portfolio™ empowers companies to optimise portfolio planning, mitigate risks, and make high-value investment choices.

The Copperleaf solution enabled Copenhagen Metro to move from siloed, Excel-based decision making to a streamlined, value-based approach. The company uses the Copperleaf Value Framework to incorporate traditional rail KPIs, business constraints, and emerging ESG factors into investment planning. This enables consistent decision making and trade-offs, guided by the organisation’s own goals and targets.

One of the benefits of working with Copperleaf, Jakob noted, was getting a better understanding of their assets. Copperleaf Asset™ has allowed Copenhagen Metro to get a clearer view of asset risk and use this data to enhance decision making. The Copperleaf Value Framework offers Copenhagen Metro a robust structure for portfolio planning, which ensures transparency, repeatability, and consensus throughout the process. The organisation now has the power to analyse multiple scenarios for the optimal investment portfolio, and can confidently create long-term plans for an uncertain future.

Copperleaf has allowed Copenhagen Metro to move from a ‘best guess’ approach to data-driven decision making

Through this transformation, the company will be able to make the right decision at the right time, maximise the value of its investments, and continue delivering exceptional service to its customers.

Watch the presentation in full or reach out to our team to see the Copperleaf solution in action.