Ruud Haket
‘Dave does his job and he doesn’t need me on the phone, but when we have a problem, we will sit down together to sort it out. We come together – we have a contingency plan that we introduced in June.’ When it comes to issues such as replacing and renewing the infrastructure, Network Rail and Greater Anglia are a good team. For instance, together they decided to stop the renewal of the overhead lines of the Great Eastern mainline before the Olympics and began repairing them instead, as the project wasn’t working and they wanted a robust system during the Games. They are now going back to the replacement of the overhead lines from London to Chelmsford.
And in the past few years, where the Great Eastern Main Line would be shut most weekends for maintenance work with a bus replacement service in operation, Haket has changed the system so that the route will only be closed for seven Sundays and two Saturdays during 2013. Instead, work will mainly be carried out after 22.30 in smaller portions. ‘We’re moving from complete weekend blockades to carrying out the work during the evenings,’ says Haket. ‘You still have to do the work, but it’s not killing the weekend market. This is where I applaud Network Rail for finding other ways of working. Doing work in bulk is cheaper than doing it in small tranches, but in the long term it’s the right thing to do.’
Clearly, passenger satisfaction is important to Haket. And in the first survey compiled by Passenger Focus after Abelio took over the running of Greater Anglia, the chips were down. ‘We knew we weren’t going to score very highly as it started on the day we took over the franchise. And in the first two weeks, there was a little bit of snow – to be precise, there was 20-25cm of snow,’ he laughs. ‘I can tell you, I remember! So our performance was badly hit. The tender was let to improve customer service – that was the goal – so we knew we wouldn’t start at the top of the pile. ‘But we have quite a steep target internally. We will see if we hit that, but we believe that it will be a lot better than the 73 per cent that it was.’ Haket’s mystery shopper initiative is helping keep staff shipshape, stations spruced up and trains clean
and tidy, while incentives such as monthly prize draws are keeping staff motivated. It’s a rigourous programme that’s carried out every month, with at least 150 trains being examined during the mystery shopper process, and all the information goes straight to local managers to help them manage their station, staff or trains.
Looking ahead to the rest of the franchise, what major plans does Haket have?
‘The biggest one is to reduce the engineering access, the closure of the lines. We are also doing a lot of redevelopment work at Chelmsford and Bishop Stortford stations. ‘We’re also going to increase car parking spaces by 650 places, plus we’ll have an extension of Oyster pay-as-you-go to Shenfield and Broxbourne. And at Audley End, we’re planning a dedicated bus link to take people from the station to Saffron Walden.
Haket adds that they are working with local MPs to come up with one vision for East Anglia, rather than every MP having their own scheme. ‘East Anglia has been left behind. We have tried to shape the agenda for making more investment in the railways and to be at the forefront with the MPs. ‘To be fair, most MPs we dealt with were in parallel with us – the ground was very fertile, it’s not something we had to work too hard for. The time was right to get everybody in the same place.’
Curriculum vitae 1964 Born in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, the
Netherlands
1980s Degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Twente
1996 Joins NedTrain, the maintenance arm of NS
2000 Director of purchasing and logistics for rolling stock for NS
2004 Engineering director for Northern Rail 2009 Bid director at Abellio 2012 Managing director of Greater Anglia
DECEMBER 2012 PAGE 19
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