Haines points the way forward
I am used to hearing bland speeches by senior rail managers, which tend either to focus on the difficulties ahead or why rail gets a bad deal. It was therefore immensely refreshing to see the speech that new Network Rail Chief Executive Andrew Haines gave at a recent award ceremony.
Rather than whingeing or overpraising, Haines provided a very good analysis of what had gone wrong in recent years at Network Rail, and pointed the way forward. And that, according to Haines, is very simple: focus more on operating the railway.
Haines focused on two ways in which operational competence was lost when the railway was split up at privatisation.
Firstly, it ended the production line of people who (like Haines) had experience of all aspects of the railway. The reason why Haines’s arrival at Network Rail was greeted with almost universal approval in the industry was that he had experience of all sides of the railways, including (crucially) of running a train operating company.
Secondly, the franchising system encouraged bids based on financial incentives but which neglected operational resilience: “Bidders are rational and they have learned how to win. This has led to highly optimised, complex delivery plans that are much harder to recover when things go wrong.”
While Haines says it was not inevitable that privatisation led to this loss of operational nous, the way that it was introduced ensured that it did: “The way that those changes were introduced has had an impact on operational expertise.”
Nor is he averse to quietly, and in a relatively coded way, giving his predecessors a bit of stick: “Not only did [operations] take a backseat, but it was squeezed. In an organisation focused on project delivery it became the easiest place to look for efficiency savings.” He adds that the status of those working in operations in Network Rail was underrated. Expert operational management was sacrificed for “other things”.
Indeed, remember Network Rail’s erstwhile slogan - “engineering excellence for Britain’s railways” (check out RAIL 483 on my website where I make this point!) - which sent the wrong message: that engineering was the focus of Network Rail when, in fact, it is running a railway (safely, of course) which is its role.
This speech augurs well. Haines points out that the decline in performance, which is definitely having an effect on passenger numbers, needs to be reversed. He points out that it is really important to target the oftenneglected small delays which do not figure in the performance stats. At the moment, no one investigates these or attributes them, as there is no financial incentive to do so.
He makes a number of suggestions, including improved training, a better apprenticeship scheme and better coordination between operators and Network Rail, notably by siting teams jointly. Above all, he aims to raise the status and professionalism of operational staff. No one can quibble with that, although achieving it will be harder.