Tracking the Zeta-Tech Train

By Alison Wimsatt

Staff Writer

 

 

Whoever thinks that only the big firms can handle the big jobs isn’t familiar with railroad technical consultant Zeta-Tech.  The 12-member firm is considered small by industry standards, yet it has tackled some mammoth projects in its lifetime.  Take, for instance, the heavy axle load project the company recently undertook.

 

“We were the leader in doing the analyses that allowed the U.S. railroad industry to increase axle loads and size of cars in the last five years,” says firm founder and president Allan Zarembski, Ph.D., P.E., adding that “It is not often a small firm like ours dictates the direction of a major industry.  We have done that on more than one occasion.”

 

Indeed, Zeta-Tech is celebrated for its mature handling of large ventures.  Established in 1984, the Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based firm’s clientele include all of the major United States and Canadian freight railroads, many of the U.S. commuter and transit systems, Amtrak, the United States Department of Transportation, and private suppliers of railroad components.  The firm also enjoys a growing presence in the international market.  Zarembski, who had worked for the Association of American Railroads prior to launching Zeta-Tech, claims that his firm experienced little turmoil in the start-up phase.  “I had the advantage that I was known within the industry and had a lot of contacts,” he says.  Even so, he acknowledges, the firm wasn’t an overnight success story.

 

“It did take a couple of years before we really got off the ground,” Zarembski says.  “We slowly increased our customer base, and then we were able to start adding employees.  We have been steadily adding an employee a year.”

 

Zarembski attributes Zeta-Tech’s current prosperity to the fact that the firm transcends industry expectations and delves deeply into its projects.  “I felt that there was a need for a company that didn’t just do the conventional A/E work, but actually got into a more detailed analysis of technical problems and track behavior and generally introduced a higher level of technical analysis than was normally encountered,” he says.

 

HAULING A LOAD

 

Zarembski explains that Zeta-Tech does work in five major spheres.

 

The first realm, he says, is hard-core technical work, which involves analyzing track performance in varying conditions.

 

“One of the big things in the railroad industry in the past couple of years has been the change to heavier cars,” he says.  “[We study] what the ramifications would be to the structural elements of the track with those higher loads, in terms of both short- and long-term degradation and failure rates."

 

The second area the firm focuses its energies on is engineering economics.

 

“This is where you take the results of the engineering and start hanging dollars on it and start looking at the economic consequences of the engineering decisions,” he says.

 

Maintenance planning and maintenance planning software are elements that comprise the third sphere of activity.

 

“We develop software that takes our engineering forecasting algorithms and applies them to the entire railroad network, looking at each small segment,” Zarembski says.  “Then we can turn around and predict that, say, in 1997, these are the locations where the rail should be replaced.  It allows the clients to develop long-term maintenance plans and forecasting.”

 

Zeta-Tech also performs operations analyses, its fourth area of concentration.

 

“We have computer models that we develop that simulate train operations and the interaction of the track with the vehicle so we can do derailment investigations,” says Zarembski.

 

Lastly, Zeta-Tech provides training programs in all aspects of railroad engineering.  It presently offers courses through the Rail Industry Association of America.

 

Like any good consulting engineer, Zarembski enjoys those projects that are challenging and unique.

 

“I like projects that involve doing something new and different that has not been looked at before,” he remarks.  “And ones that require a mix of hard engineering capability, detailed analysis, and an understanding of the operation and maintenance issues associated with the environment.”

 

One project that offered such a challenge was an analysis the company conducted for Amtrak.

 

“A big issued now is what happens when you have mixed operations using one track – when you have high-speed passenger trains and low-speed heavy freight trains utilizing the same track,” Zarembski says.  “We have been actively involved with both Amtrak and the freight industry to define the standards of track and the costs involved.  We did an analysis for Amtrak as to what the different proposed trainsets would do in terms of damage to the track structure.

 

REPUTATION SYAS IT ALL

 

            In lieu of a separate staff that specializes in marketing the company’s services, the firm puts its trust into the expertise of its senior engineers and uses a few international technical agents.

 

            “The first thing, of course, is word of mouth and reputation,” asserts Zarembski.  “We are very well-known in the industry for our technical abilities and people come to us with problems.”  Members of the firm also maintain a high profile in the publishing and presentation arenas.

 

            What makes marketing particularly trying these days for a railroad consulting firm, opines Zarembski, is the fact that the nature of clients has changed.  The industry has undergone a lot of consolidation, he says, resulting in fewer large railroads.

 

            “Our client base here has decreased, and that was one of the things that forced us to go international,” explains Zarembski.

 

            Another problem area, he reveals, is on the transit side.

 

            “In the last couple of years, government support for transits has decreased, and that is felt in terms of reduced money for engineering and system upgrade,” he says.

 

            However, there is an upside to some of the troubles the industry is suffering.  Zarembski says that when corporations downsize, his firm is able to seize on the opportunity to provide more external support.

 

            As far as the local and national economies’ impact on the firm, Zarembski again cites the financial obstacles encountered in the public sector.

 

            “When the economy takes a downturn, one of the things that always gets hit is government support for transit,” he says.  “And then as the public support is removed, the transits have to reduce their deficits, and that becomes difficult, because transits are not traditionally money-making activities; they require local subsidy.  As a result, they cut back on their support of engineering activities, and we feel that.”

 

            Zeta-Tech is also not immune to economic ills experienced on the federal level.  Specifically, entities like the U.S. Army, which retains small pieces of railroad on its bases, are vulnerable to funding cuts.

 

            Nonetheless, Zarembski feels that the firm is stable enough that when the track in one sector gets bumpy, the other sectors will offer a smoother ride.

 

            “If the public sector is down, we will increase work in the private sector.  And if both are down, then we increase our international work,” he states.

 

NEW RECRUITS

 

            An engineer recruited to join the Zeta-Tech crew must possess a zeal and an openness to learn, according to Zarembski.

 

            “At the junior level, the engineer must have a willingness to learn and know not only how to make use of what he knows, but how to find out what he doesn’t know and how to learn to bring that to bear to problems that are new,” he says.

 

            This means the person must be capable of thinking in non-conventional ways and should be able to understand the motivations behind the theories.

 

            “That is very important to us, because a lot of work we do does not fit into cut-and-dried formulas,” Zarembski stresses.  “You cannot pick up the civil engineering handbook and find the formula to do most of the work we do.”

 

            An especially important part of the job is field work, says Zarembski, and Zeta-Tech engineers at all levels are expected to participate.

 

            “In December I was in Sweden, and that is not the place you want to be in winter unless you are in railroad engineering,” he laughs.  “But there I was walking track with snow up to my knees and an hour and a half of daylight.  And that is what we expect – to go out, get dirty in the field.”

 

ALL ABOARD FOR THE FUTURE

 

            Zarembski believes the caliber of work that Zeta-Tech delivers is both what makes the firm successful and what will sustain them through the end of the century and beyond.

 

            “We routinely get problems where other people have thrown up their hands,” he says.  “Whoever we do work for walks away feeling we have a good product, and as a result we do a lot of repeat business.  We are responsive, we do work in a timely manner.  We are no-nonsense.”

 

            One of Zeta-Tech’s goals for the future is to further its expansion into the international realm.  However, he concedes that is somewhat of an uphill battle considering the prevailing attitude concerning international work.

 

            “Most of the time before somebody will hire you for an international job, they want to see you and meet with you.  They want you physically there,” he says.

 

            This is not always possible for Zeta-Tech, he points out, because so far many of the international jobs the firm handles are relatively small.

 

            “As a result, it doesn’t justify going out and doing a lot of high-cost international marketing and establishing an office,” Zarembski says.

 

            An additional barrier encountered in the international market is the widely-held perception that American railroad technology is not as good as that of the French or Japanese.

 

            “What we are trying to establish is the fact that that may be true on the passenger side, but on the freight side, the U.S. is the world leader,” Zarembski says.  “It is that technology that we want to export.”

 

            Zarembski would also like to see the firm’s New Jersey office and San Francisco branch expand at a slow, steady rate.

 

            But the most critical thing, he claims, is for the firm to keep producing superior quality work, whether completing a big task or a smaller one.

 

            “We have unique expertise and skills, and that is the key to our success,” he says.