Interview
Norwood Junction (before)
construction site management experience. We needed people out there, not interfering with the contractors’ business, but making sure they delivered on the designs.’ Peter Kalton painted a picture of the nitty gritty: ‘It’s worth considering that at the same time as we were refurbishing the 44 stations and managing TfL, LOROL was constantly developing its operation and NR was extending our platforms to go from three to four car.’ Smiling in a way that revealed it wasn’t so enjoyable at the time, Peter gave the example of LOROL working on lighting design for a three car train, making sure it was correct, ‘and at the same time we had an extra 20-odd metres being added in. So the question was ‘Who’s doing the lighting for that? and What standard are they delivering it to? We’re putting new PA speakers in the three car bit, who’s putting speakers in the new section? Is it LOROL? Is it NR - because NR has different standards to LOROL?’
I was starting to get the idea along with a headache. ‘So you can see there was an awful lot of work required by LOROL to coordinate that,’ Peter continued. ‘But obviously we had already gone out to tender with Amey for our systems installation contract, and Mansells, so quite often the question was ‘Who is going to be on site?’ Even practicalities such as that were a big challenge.’
Quality of people is crucial Talking of teams changing, does that happen in contractors’ teams? Is there anything they could or should have done differently in LOROL’s experience? Mark Eaton stated the bare bones of it: ‘Ultimately it depends on the people. On a station, and I suspect it would also be the case if we looked at a group of stations, we had sets that worked really well because they had the right site management in place, and other locations where it was more challenging.
‘I don’t want to make motherhood and apple pie statements but clearly you need everybody involved to be open and honest in terms of the issues that emerge. And with all contracting or build-type operations there are always commercial considerations running along in the background – people have tight programmes and tight cost budgets to maintain, and I think the ultimate challenge, and this is one of the philosophical points we’ve been careful to stay focused on in our relationship with TfL, is to flag up issues early and focus on solving the problem. As well as that, try to avoid the commercials getting in the way of the common sense outcome - don’t let them drive the wrong course of action.
‘Although we had some difficult commercial debates at times, we enjoyed good relationships with all our suppliers. There will always be issues that drive up expense and they need to be dealt with and swiftly closed out.’
Since the substantial part of the programme was completed a
Norwood Junction (after)
year or so ago, LOROL has been working through the inevitable post-rectification work, ‘and that has been carried out well by our colleagues from Mansell’ said Eaton. ‘So often in these schemes, there’s a protracted period of people making claims after the event and it’s not unusual for that part to last longer than the project (Peter Kelton agreed, with a loaded ‘Yes’). We could have been side-tracked with commercial close-outs distracting us from the challenges of last year including the Olympics and whatever we needed to do as a train operator but that hasn’t happened.’ Working with Network Rail is also a ‘very positive’ experience for LOROL according to Mark Eaton. ‘Again it’s about having the right people in the right jobs. But one of the challenges for train operators is that NR is so often driven by the delivery of the day-to-day service and state of the infrastructure, and that means our relationship around stations and refurbishment is further down the list of priorities. So you have to work very hard at that because as soon as you take your eye off the ball there’s a natural tendency in the industry to say, ‘oh it doesn’t really matter about refurbishment we’ll focus on the train service today’.’
A growing body of expertise?
Surely there must be a huge body of expertise in the rail refurbishment industry now, and it must be getting easier to carry out? More knowing looks pass between the men. ‘Within LOROL obviously the projects team has now gone but we still have a station infrastructure team which is very knowledgeable,’ explained Peter Kelton, ‘and that means NR will pay us to do some of its works because it has confidence that we can deliver.’
But overall, Mark Eaton believes it’s a brave statement to say the industry finds it increasingly easy to do station refurbishment. ‘I think since privatisation if we go back to the mid-90s, stations have been recognised as an increasingly important part of the total railway offer. They have certainly moved up in LOROL’s agenda and there’s the NSIP (National Stations Improvement Programme) that NR is leading at a national level, all evidence of everybody recognising that they want stations to provide a very professional and credible gateway to the network.
‘The downside of course is that there’s a bit of a sore tooth effect in terms of activity, linked slightly to the fact that when franchises and concessions kicked off, you always wanted to do it in the early years to get maximum benefit, which goes back to the national debate around the rate at which networks are re-franchised and how that affects the station conversion programme. The NSIP programme is helpful because in many respects it’s separated from the franchise process but looking at the big picture, it’s a bit more franchise-linked.’
March 2013 Page 23
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