Rail Professional interview: Patrick Hallgate
We’re starting to get a much better idea of what each area’s contribution is to the central overheads
At 38, Patrick Hallgate is the youngest of Network Rail’s new devolved managing directors with one of the biggest, and most disruptive, investment plans to oversee on the Great Western. Katie Silvester meets him
given him a good background to take on the devolved Western area, with its looming plan for electrification and a resignalling programme already underway. ‘The spend is equivalent to about three times per mile what
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was spent for West Coast, but a lot of that is Crossrail,’ he says. ‘We’ve had an efficiency drive since the West Coast, so the pounds in the ground are working a lot harder. There are 13 major projects taking place on the route.’ A psychologist by training, Hallgate stumbled into a career
on the railways almost by accident. As part of a project to improve recruitment for the police, when he was working at the Home Office, he had to look at graduate training schemes used by other professions. He came across the Railtrack scheme, liked the look of it and a friend who worked in HR at Railtrack persuaded him to apply. ‘I think if someone had said I’d be in the rail industry 12
years later, I’d have probably shot them! If someone told me now I’d still be here in 11, 12 years time I wouldn’t mind. It
espite his youthful appearance, Patrick Hallgate has already racked up 13 years of experience at Network Rail and its predecessor Railtrack. A combination of managing major projects and running the Sussex and Anglia routes had
stays fresh – every day’s a fresh challenge, it’s like a new job. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at the moment.’ The reason for Network Rail’s devolution of its routes into separate units with managing directors at their helm, as opposed to the old route directors, was so that the routes would be more closely aligned to the corresponding Tocs. Costs for the devolved companies should, in theory, be more transparent, instead of being part of larger Network Rail programmes whose costs were not easily itemised.
So how is it working out on the ground? ‘Principally, for us, it’s meant bringing together 11 different
disparate teams, all of whom were located in the region, but many of whom didn’t come together until they reported to a board member at King’s Place [Network Rail’s London headquarters]. In a way I can understand the frustrations of our stakeholders that led up to devolution. When you look at renewals plans, for example, if you’ve got six different assets, there would be six different plans, six different spreadsheets, different reporting systems. Now we’re trying to say, if there’s one Western, let’s look at what all the costs are and try to get one plan that gives best value for money.’ The aim to increase transparency is a work in progress, he admits, but it is improving.
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