Peer Review: Chris Green
Former Managing Director, Network SouthEast
Tim Shoveller leaves us in no doubt that rail managers operate complex, real-time production lines where the smallest error can escalate into a customer service crisis. It is therefore a no-brainer that the industry is likely to perform best with a simple, cohesive organisation.
A railway production line is all about teamwork in which the operator and the fleet, track, signalling and electric supply engineers all have to co-operate to deliver a successful public timetable. Every one of these people is dependent on the other to deliver their timetable, their maintenance or their emergency repairs.
So, is the railway likely to perform better if these individual teams are brought together to run a network of services around one table – or do we really believe that it is better to return them to a silo management where they work for different bosses with conflicting objectives, budgets and politics?
I was MD InterCity in 1992 when BR introduced an ‘alliance-style’ ‘Organising for Quality’ (OforQ) structure, and I can vouch that this was the most effective organisation that I have experienced for running a railway.
It abolished every possible silo and brought all the people needed to make the InterCity network work into a single structure. Managers with common objectives sat around the same Board table every month and hammered out ways of making the business perform better.
The exciting thing was that engineers started making valuable contributions to timetabling and marketing, while operators
offered new ideas for getting the maintenance done faster. It also demonstrated that if the top team work together, then the rest will follow. The result was the highest performance InterCity ever achieved.
South West Trains is clearly moving in the same direction – and I would counsel it not to be too impatient for the performance indicators to improve. I inherited a stable and well-maintained railway at InterCity, but SWT has clearly been hampered by a backlog in asset renewals in the very London suburban area where there is no space to recover from minor delays.
The important thing is that the Alliance is seeking solutions to its problems as a single team, rather than lobbing blame – and compensation claims – at each other from afar. It has already demonstrated its ability to improve engineering access, to undertake impressive mileages of track renewal, and to lengthen platforms without delaying trains.
Network Rail and Stagecoach are to be congratulated on creating the SWT Alliance. I, for one, have every faith that they will be rewarded with improved performance (both operational and financial) before long. I also believe that performance would be a lot worse under the old structure.
Sir David Higgins was wise to predict that it would take at least three years to see the results. Let’s hope that his successor, Mark Carne, will take a similar view, and start planning the rollout of further Alliances on the more self-contained networks, such as neighbouring Southeastern as well as Scotland, Wales and Anglia. Teamwork beats Silos every time!
