We have a lot of obligations
to deliver – we just have to do them a lot quicker’
Taking over a franchise of just 29 months was never going to be easy. But, as Tracey Lattimore discovers, Ruud Haket – Greater Anglia’s managing director – seems to be heading in the right direction
T
he pressure’s definitely on for Ruud Haket. The managing director of Greater Anglia certainly likes challenges – and none so tough as overhauling East Anglia’s railway on a meagre 29-month
contract. Is the man up to the job? You’d certainly hope so, and with a career history bursting with achievements, he looks – and sounds – the part. Hailing from Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht in the Netherlands, Haket began his career with NedTrain, the maintenance arm of the Dutch state railway Nederlandse Spoorwegen in 1996, and in 2000 he was appointed director of purchasing and logistics for rolling stock. When NS’s international arm, now called Abellio, began winning bids in the UK, Ruud relocated over here, initially working in the Northern Rail franchise. Following his tenure as engineering director for Northern that began in 2004, Haket became bid director at Abellio in 2009 – and headed up the Greater Anglia team from the start of the franchise in February 2012. But what can he do in such a short timescale? ‘Actually quite a bit,’ he smiles. ‘We are focused on making improvements where we can, and the central theme is customer service and making incremental changes.
‘The hard bit – cleaning trains, cleaning stations, making small developments in stations, customer service training for everybody – we will build up as any other franchise would. But with things such as improving performance and working with national rail in a completely different way, there’s a lot you can do.’ What you do notice, says Haket, is that it’s a bit of a sprint. ‘We have a lot of obligations to deliver – we just have to do them a lot quicker.’ Haket is obviously an influential man – and one who seems to have won the respect of his colleagues and counterparts at Network Rail. Staff seem to be coming onboard with his plans – ‘I’m always careful,
but feedback from customers gives the impression that staff are engaged’ – but with the franchise only a few months in, there’s an enormous amount of work to be done.
‘One of the challenges is to keep the pace going while not losing everyone around you,’ says Haket. ‘Certainly for the management team and the layers underneath, there’s a lot going on and a lot of pressure to deliver but, to be fair, everyone delivers. All our projects are delivered on time and within budget, and that’s how it should be.’ So far, the figures stack up. Performance is on the up, with nearly 94.6 per cent of Greater Anglia trains on time during October 2012, and 97 per cent of Metro route services (Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria) hitting their time target, according to the latest PPM figures. ‘We’re running ahead of the game at the moment,’ says Haket, earnestly. But taking over the franchise back in February, with the pressure of the impending Olympics looming, how did Haket and his team prepare the ground so solidly – in such a small amount of time?
‘There was no Olympic plan when we took over the franchise. We had a timetable but nothing else, and five months to go. We started out with 14 people and had to do a crowd management plan for our Olympic stations (Cheshunt, Stratford Regional and Liverpool Street), create marketing plans and organise crewing. We had 50 volunteers from Holland, so that worked well.’ So was it successful? ‘In the end it’s always for someone else to determine if you’re successful,’ says Haket modestly. ‘Operationally it went very, very well, with 95 per cent PPM during the Olympics and 94 per cent during the Paralympics. But for me, it was about finding the balance. At one end it was running trains and managing stations as you do otherwise, but at the other side was atmosphere, which was completely different. I think it was a great success.’
DECEMBER 2012 PAGE 15
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