Interview
and more than 200 stations to run. It is a different kettle of fish. It is a 14 or 15-year franchise? So that’s seven years of managing it through disruption and seven years of managing a super duper new railway. For something like Great Western, you are given assumptions on what Crossrail will do, assumptions on the trains you will have, and you bid to that. If it changes you need to show your model is flexible enough to be able to modify the costs.’ Gordon makes it clear that he is not at liberty to discuss details of his West Coast bid. The rules of the game prevent it. But he is happy to make generic comments about Keolis’ existing franchises and the way future franchises could be modelled.
Like most rail executives, Alistair Gordon is wary of questions about labour costs. The McNulty report made it clear that the increasing amount of money paid to a growing workforce was an issue to be tackled. The railway employs more than 10,000 more people than it did at privatisation, while the size of the rolling stock fleet has changed little. A driver working overtime and rest days can take home £50,000 a year – more than a Flybe captain, a senior air traffic controller or a primary school head teacher, all of whom require higher qualifications.
Gordon is aware of the union sensitivities on the subject and is careful not to cause offence. ‘The last thing Philip Hammond said before leaving the Department for Transport was that the government realised this was an area that they needed to give train operators support in managing. We cannot address this on our own. Hammond said the staff needed to know that if the franchise fails, they don’t all just transfer from one to another with complete security. In the private sector, if a company fails, people are in trouble and jobs go. We don’t have that incentive, that responsibility, in this industry. If a franchise fails they are all safe. We need to find a way to incentivise staff to play their part in delivering a successful railway. We have a culture at the moment where that is not the case.’
A link to fluctuations in GDP appears likely to replace the current ‘cap and collar’ system. Gordon believes that this will not unduly affect operators – he agrees with the government’s basic proposition that the proposed changes would keep operators focused on delivering cost savings and growing revenue ‘even if the wider economy goes down’.
And if Keolis could only have one franchise, which would it be? Gordon is reluctant to commit, but eventually confesses: ‘Southern and Thameslink combined with Great Northern and the London Bridge bits of Southeastern is the jewel in the crown – it will be 15 per cent of the UK passenger revenue. ‘But it’s a short franchise and it has a lot of change to go through. The key element is change management, and the team that wins it will be the one that shows it can manage the passengers and the stakeholders through the process. It has to be our number one priority because of its scale, and because Southern is where our track record lies. We won’t let other things get in the way of that.’
APRIL 2012 PAGE 23
Curriculum vitae
1968 Born in Reading 1990 BSc in mathematics from University College London 1990 Transport consultant at Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners, later Jacobs
1995 Transport consultant at Steer Davies Gleave 1997 Joins Eurostar, going on to do various roles in finance and branding, including strategy director
2004 Joins Keolis as project director leading UK bidding 2010 CEO of Keolis UK
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