He continues: “The discipline around project gateways is pretty widely known in any industry. And any project in any industry that’s ever got itself into bother is because it’s not managed that discipline around those gateways. Because, quite often, people don’t want to be told that you can’t hit that date.”
What makes McIntosh sure that there’s now enough emphasis on checking projects before they start?
“There are a few things. Nationally, there’s the enhancements delivery improvement programme, which is something we’ve worked up with the regulator under Malcolm Brindred, who is one of our non-execs. There are a number of improvements within that, not least a very robust peer review process. More locally, we’ve just installed discipline around the fact that projects won’t go through GRIP3 gateway until they come to my investment panel, where we will ask the very simple question.”
Having already rejected a major project such as the King’s Cross throat renewals, and added a year to its former 2019 deadline, McIntosh shows that he’s not going to be a pushover for any project manager who appears without a solid plan that can be delivered. But is McIntosh sure he has the right people to help?
“We’ve got… yes is the straightforward answer. The reason for my hesitation is that we should make sure that when we’re peer-reviewing Doncaster Platform 0, for example, the people who are peer-reviewing know what an intervention like that might mean. So somebody looking at Doncaster Platform 0 realises that attached to it is the introduction of bi-directional signalling, which is a very complicated piece of signalling work.
“So what we have to do is make sure that when you start a project, you look at the scope and ask who are the people with the experience and competence to understand it and get underneath the skin of it.”
Railway projects have also been complicated, needing a variety of pieces to fall correctly into place. They can be disrupted by the simplest of things - a key member of staff falling ill, high winds disrupting a crane, or cold weather freezing ballast into wagons. They can also be delayed by competing priorities taking essential kit elsewhere - there are only so many heavy lift cranes in the country, or high-capacity tampers fit for third rail use, for example.
Complexity also comes from doing many different things at the same time. NR certainly has plenty to do, and an impatient audience. So how can NR make its projects simpler to deliver?
McIntosh has plenty to say: “Let me give you an example - the Digital Railway, and in particular ETCS on the East Coast Main Line. One of the decisions I made when we postponed the implementation of King’s Cross was to also decouple European Train Control System and the remodelling. ETCS has a very different risk profile to that of the remodelling. But because they would both be done at the same time, they would be coupled together. But in doing that you were compounding the risk profile, so instead of 1+1=2 you had 1+1= about 7.”
Essentially, it was going to be too risky to install new signalling on a railway that was being rebuilt - the risk of one project or the other not being completed on time was too much. Yet there’s a cost in installing conventional signalling for the new King’s Cross layout that could be removed in only a few years.
“We’re now beginning the process of going back to the industry to consult on our ETCS programme on the East Coast Main Line. The important point I’m trying to make is that previously the programme was going to be done in parallel with us reconfiguring the East Coast Main Line with King’s Cross, Huntingdon to Woodwalton four-tracking, and Werrington dive-under. And the one thing I know from my own experience is trying to deliver something like ETCS on an unstable railway layout will cause a lot of pain.
“So the first thing we’re going to do with our ETCS programme is get a stable railway that’s ETCS and technology-ready, to then allow us to roll the technology on top. The shift from colour-light signalling to in-cab signalling is huge, culturally huge, on the railway. Then, when we’ve got that operating in a safe and reliable way, we can then begin to hone the solution to deliver some of the performance and capacity benefits that it can bring.
“So your question about how we can do things differently in the future is that we need to be realistic about how we implement the big changes on the railway - what can be done in what timeframes. And face up to some difficult tasks. There are a lot of MPs who keep telling me they can do things faster and better on the railway, and maybe they can have a go, but we need to be quite robust with our stakeholders when we’re setting these projects up. That’s one of the things we’ve not done in the past.”
The upgrades McIntosh mentions (Woodwalton and Werrington), and others such as York North Throat remodelling and freight loops between Northallerton and Newcastle, are set to unlock more capacity on the ECML. Virgin is keen to use that capacity to help pay its £3 billion premium to government. First is keen to use it to run London-Edinburgh open access services from 2021, for which it recently won permission from the Office of Rail and Road. Are they likely to be delivered in this Control Period (before 2019)?
“No, not those. But I think there’s a context to what was published and what was said in this Control Period. King’s Cross Throat is a renewals scheme which would have been delivered right at the end of this Control Period, and now will go into the next Control Period.
