KEY POINTS:
- Ensure assets records are complete and up-to-date
- Safe working is better working
- Is the chief executive's role too big for one man?
- Strengthen the Network Rail board
- Set out the long-term vision for Network Rail
Read the peer review for this feature.
To Sir Peter Hendy, Chairman of Network Rail:
Over the past few years we have spent several happy dinners putting the railway world right, and now you have the opportunity to do just that. I know you will relish the task. This letter is meant by way of a critical friend, and I hope you will take the comments in that spirit.
On March 25 2015, Network Rail published its Delivery Plan for Control Period 5, which contained a paragraph with a warning of “challenges” and the “wider economy”. A cynic might conclude that Network Rail was preparing the way to talk about rising costs and delivery slippage across all its projects, while not fundamentally addressing the need for it to become ever more customer, client and taxpayer-focused.
There appears to be incomprehension inside Network Rail at the outside perception of the organisation.
The internal perception is we’re running more trains, so what’s the problem if they are a few minutes late? The external perception is one of continued failure of performance and time-keeping.
The internal perception is we are doing a large amount of excellent maintenance and upgrading. The external perception is one of continued overruns of engineering every weekend.
This was illustrated by Network Rail’s reaction to Christmas 2014 problems. The internal perception was that only 1% of the works had a problem - the external reality was that of customer disruption and a failed programme.
At the heart of this internal perception problem is a failure to understand the ‘customer’. And it is the ‘customer’ who should be key to the organisation, not the ‘engineer’. When I was Transport Minister I made this point both to NR and in numerous speeches. However, this whole problem is actually much larger, because most customers blame the train operating companies when the vast majority of the failings are actually Network Rail’s.
What this underlines is that a massive culture change needs to happen. If you don’t embed that change, all else will be impossible.
Network Rail needs to remember that it is not their railway, and that maintaining the railway is not in an end in itself. The only point of a railway is to move people and freight from one place to another economically and efficiently. The new mantra must be: “It’s the customer that counts.”
Operationally, Network Rail’s primary role is to provide the infrastructure that enables a railway to be provided. So in essence, it is a network infrastructure and engineering company, with the requisite skills being asset management and maintenance, enhancement, repair and renewal of the existing infrastructure.
Its second role is to provide a continuous system that allows the flow of traffic, which requires route management such as signalling and programming skills.
Many industry commentators are concerned that knowledge of the state of the asset base is not good enough, which in turn leads to a skewed estimate of what volume of work is achievable in any period. This criticism may or may not be fair, but I think that you need to reassure yourself that the NR record of its assets and their state is complete and up to date. Challenge number one!
The solution for Network Rail was always simply to ask the taxpayer to pay more - or simply add to the existing debt. It seemed to believe that while throughout the rest of government the mantra was “more for less”, it was acceptable for Network Rail to do ‘less for more’ in terms of value delivered. Yes, there have been savings in terms of direct costs, but the amount of work delivered for what has been spent has steadily declined, as a result of dreadful efficiencies.
However, the initial enthusiasm to bring down costs turns into inertia, and the suggestion is that opportunities are limited. Moreover, the idea that some of the work could be slipped into Control Period 6 seemed to be acceptable.
At least in the operational side of the operation, from a change in culture and a complete asset record will flow a realistic assessment of volume and a sensible prioritisation of those works achievable in Control Periods. I am especially alarmed by the Great Western electrification programme, where over the past few weeks I have heard about possessions where only a single lineside mast was erected, or where worksites were marked out and possessions taken - but no work done at all.
