Interview
LOROL facts
• LOROL is a joint venture company between Deutsche Bahn and MTR Corporation. The business operates as part of Arriva plc, Deutsche Bahn’s division responsible for regional passenger transport outside of Germany
• LOROL operates London Overground rail services on behalf of TfL and employs 1,200 people. It is headquartered in Swiss Cottage.
• LOROL has 97.29 per cent punctuality making it the UK’s most punctual rail operator
• There have been 3.2 million passenger journeys since 2007 and annual passenger numbers have increased by more than 250 per cent
• Operates 4.5 per cent of all UK rail trains on just 0.6 per cent of track mileage
• The East London Line has become the most reliable UK service, with 12 trains per hour
• LOROL’s is the most modern fleet of trains in the country. Its 65 trains include eight 172 (diesel trains) 20 378/1s (DC electric trains) and 37 378/2s (AC/DC electric trains)
It’s also worth remembering that aside from LOROL and
TfL, the freeholder is Network Rail, said Peter Kalton, ‘so adding NR to the mix, which had a budget that was pre-determined in CP4 meant we could potentially have had a project to refurbish a station that didn’t necessarily reflect in NR’s budget, and it might have had different priorities.’ Peter remembers an awful lot of discussions between TfL, LOROL and NR on how to deliver a refurbishment that NR was happy with, that TfL was happy with, and arguably most importantly, that the customer wanted, as well as being seen to be value for money. ‘Balancing all of that was tricky to be honest, but I think we did it well in the end, and we learned some lessons along the way.’
Balancing risks with cost Mark Eaton described pinning TfL down to a final build specification that met everyone’s expectations as the most demanding phase of the project, and one that took far longer than expected. ‘But once you’ve got clear agreement on the outputs then normally it’s a relatively straightforward process to procure contractors.’
So it seemed almost unnecessary to ask if there were any challenges around that? ‘Yes! said both men looking at each other knowingly. ‘Getting the right procurement strategy for delivering a package of works was an issue,’ said Peter Kalton. ‘We could have gone to a contractor and asked it to design and build the stations and seek our approval, but we designed the stations ourselves using GCP, and then went to Mansells to do the build.
‘In general the problem with the rail industry is that there are lots of unknowns and risks; limited records of what’s been laid underground, a lack of information on the original plans of a Victorian station and so on. Combine that with managing the aspirations of user groups and you have to be a little bit restrictive on what you do otherwise you’ll never pin down the specification.
‘So we went out to tender, because the risks are so great for a contractor to do both that it would be price inhibitive to be able to deliver the output we wanted for TfL. Work on the railway isn’t cheap so it’s about trying to find a way of delivery that achieves value for money considering those risks..’
• In 2010 the new East London Line was opened adding seven new miles to the route and 17 miles in total to the London Underground network. The £1 billion investment was completed ahead of schedule
• Over the past five years the North London Line has been totally re-built, resulting in a greatly improved service with trains running every seven minutes at peak time
• The extension of the East London line from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction in December 2012 increased services from 945 trains a day to 1,090
• Consistently met a pledge to keep ticketless travel below 5 per cent, reducing it from 13 per cent in 2007 to below 2 per cent in two years
LOROL was responsible for managing Mansells and acted as the bridge between TfL, making sure its aspirations were being met. Formal sign off from TfL was required at the design stage and once the stations had been built. But it was a painstaking process, as Peter Kalton described it:
‘TfL would say ‘go and build South Hampstead station we like the designs’, and then right at the end it would say, ‘but on the designs you said you would put a shelter here and there isn’t one’. Having those discussions when you’re refurbishing an awful lot of stations requires a lot of work.’
Teams that change with the project
In terms of managing the contractors, how was that? Did you work well together? Both men laughed heartily but it was clear that ultimately there was a mutual respect. ‘It wasn’t easy is the short answer,’ said Mark Eaton. ‘The key contractor as we said was Mansell and we also had Amey delivering the station systems. The programme was phased, but we did have multiple stations live at points in time and that meant we needed an experienced project team within the business.
‘That team needed to be flexible and change its nature as the project progressed. In the early days it was all about project design and specification, procurement of suppliers and getting best value for money. Then as we moved into a construction phase we needed our best design expertise, but also more
March 2013 Page 21
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