Hendy review: Andrew Boagey
Chairman of the Railway Engineers’ Forum
Two great interviews in RailReview Q4-2015. Two powerful reflections on the state of the rail industry, both from very senior figures who are passionate about the challenges that we face and the mistakes that have been made in the past.
Both Sir John Armitt and Sir Peter Hendy are extremely well respected, and both acknowledge the extraordinary and demanding nature of the task in hand: running a safety-critical multi-disciplinary transport asset that has never been more important to the health of the British economy.
Sir John reflects on how it was necessary to stabilise the industry after the Hatfield crash and how he brought maintenance back in-house. “One of the best decisions we ever made because it gave us back control of the assets”.
He is also quoted as saying that Railtrack lost both knowledge and control as it placed its assets in the hands of its sub-contractors. At very considerable cost, indeed - including to its reputation.
Messing with the organisation and contracting structure of the rail industry has consequences. More than a nod towards the Shaw Review into the future organisation and funding at Network Rail, one might suspect, and a comment that will surely not be lost on Sir Peter Hendy, who clearly understands how to work in tandem with Westminster.
Reading the interview with Sir Peter, he makes three particularly memorable points.
It is evident that he is a realist. Bringing private sector funding into the railway has been tried before, he says, with limited success. Firstly in Railtrack (see above), and secondly in the form of the Regulated Asset Base. Neither has survived in its original form. Yet Sir Peter still points out that the railway “has to be able to maximise third party financial input”. Yes, of course.
And we await the Shaw Review conclusions with interest. I wonder: unless you have a very fine railway asset (such as HS1), or one that is relatively easy for fund managers to assess, maybe we should not expect too much in this area, with or without devolution.
Secondly, Sir Peter is clearly a man who knows who his customers are. Not the ORR, by the way, as some might have assumed. He makes it quite clear that “regulation is in no way a substitute for good customer service”.
And finally, Sir Peter is someone who knows what it is to get good managers onto his team, and the importance of growing them into the future leaders that the railway needs: “You always want someone to ask the intelligent questions”; “decent local managers to take a sensible view”; and the classic line “what I would expect of a devolved organisation is that the people running it on a more local basis would make some intelligent interventions to stop pissing money down the drain”.
An unambiguous message, not likely to be lost on his front line troops or on the strategic commanders, I suspect!
Two leaders who know the rail industry well, who know how challenging it can be, and who know the importance of getting good people to lead it from within.
Read the original interview: Hendy means business at Network Rail.
