Peer review: Tim Burleigh
Relationship Development Manager, Eversholt Rail Group
As major rolling stock through-life asset managers, Eversholt Rail welcomes and supports the Rail Supply Group strategy. A skilled, motivated and properly resourced supplier base is a prerequisite for success and continued growth of the national rail market.
Our rail network continues to expand, through completion of major infrastructure investments such as Crossrail, the Borders Railway and the first phase of East West Rail. HS2 construction is soon to commence, and further major schemes such as Crossrail 2 are imminent. By 2019 more than 1,700 new vehicles will have been added to the national rolling stock fleet. All of these investments will increase the demands on already-busy suppliers.
The importance of continuing investment to sustain and grow the capability across all areas of the railway system supply chain cannot be overstated. Terence rightly highlights the need for visibility of future opportunities across the rail sector to encourage this investment, and to avoid the ‘feast and famine’ procurement that has plagued the industry in recent years. It is good to know that the high-level national passenger rolling stock strategy, initiated over three years ago and sponsored by the major rolling stock owners and the Rail Delivery Group, continues to be valuable in informing the RSG’s priorities and planning.
A relentless focus on improving the reliability and resilience of all elements of the railway system - infrastructure as well as rolling stock - is essential. These remain passengers’ and train operators’ highest priorities, and are the foundation for sustained growth. In seeking the highest levels of reliability, balanced with affordability and deliverability, it is important to recognise where technologies and products developed in other engineering sectors - often involving a scale of investment much larger than railway production volumes could ever justify - already achieve the required performance. In such cases it may be more appropriate to apply our domain expertise to adapt these for the railway environment, rather than to develop a brand new product. Such an approach would also ensure that innovation funding can be targeted at areas of greatest overall system benefit.
The large scale of predicted growth in the rolling stock sector alone is such that we must make special efforts to recruit, develop and retain high-calibre people. As well as addressing the known diversity and age demographic issues, we must also broaden and deepen our skills base by recruiting from other engineering sectors with transferable skills.
The RSG strategy highlights new-build opportunities for the supplier base - understandably so, given a national rolling stock fleet predicted to grow by between 51% and 99% over the coming 30 years. It is equally important, however, that the strategy also recognises the resources and complementary skills required for the efficient and effective support of a growing portfolio of existing rolling stock (and other railway assets) that can have an operational life of 30 years or more.
The ability to deliver targeted and cost-effective enhancements of existing rolling stock alongside new-build, to meet passengers’ ever-increasing expectations, is fundamental to continued affordability. We must also achieve continuous improvement in fleet availability and operational efficiency to maximise the benefits of the larger national fleet both to train operators and passengers. This will require proactive suppliers with vision and long-term commitment.
As it evolves the RSG strategy must also take full account of the opportunities arising from continuing government commitment to devolution of rail service specification and management responsibilities to empowered regional authorities such as Rail North and West Midlands Rail. This increasing regional focus should assist in broadening the supplier base, combining the best traditional railway skills with best practice from other engineering disciplines.
