Strathclyde Management Science students win National Prize two years in a row

Geraint Roberts (left) with the Director of the MSc in Operational Research (Dr Kerem Akartunali)

For the second year in a row, a student from the Management Science department at Strathclyde has won a national prize for the best industry-based MSc dissertation. The May Hicks prize is awarded by the Operational Research Society for the best industry-based project in Operational Research in the UK.

The 2012 winner was recently announced as Geraint Roberts, who graduated with an MSc in Operational Research with distinction from Strathclyde. Geraint’s project was titled "GB Rail Efficiency and Benchmarking". The client for his project was Asset Management Consulting Limited (AMCL) who advise the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) on the effective and efficient use of its assets. The dissertation described a pilot project to investigate an internal benchmarking process for GB Rail. Geraint's analytical approach to overall rail system costs at a regional level is the first of its kind and AMCL plan to develop the approach further with its clients for wider application and will be sharing the results with ORR and Network Rail.

Strathclyde also won the award in 2011. The winner was Rutger Alberink, also a distinction student from the MSc in Operational Research. Rutger's project was titled "Accident Modelling in the Railway Industry: A Railway Station Performance Measure on Passenger Slips, Trips and Falls". Rutger's client was RSSB, an independent, non-profit organisation whose purpose is to play a central role in supporting and facilitating industry-wide knowledge development to improve the overall level of safety in the rail industry. The research undertaken by Rutger looked at specific attributes at individual railway stations (stairs, ramps and escalators) to understand their influence on accident statistics. Rutger's work has been a catalyst for a new initiative to develop an industry standard risk model for station safety risk.

As MSc projects are currently underway for 2013 students, supervisors are currently keeping an eye out for another potential winner, hopefully making it three in a row for Strathclyde!