COMMENT
Alan Price – career highlights
From March 2011 – Rail Division Infrastructure Director at FirstGroup 2010-11 – Working with Bechtel as part of its team bidding for a major rail contract in Istanbul, Turkey. 2008-10 – Head of Engineering and then Director of Projects at London Underground, where he was responsible for the delivery of all LU’s track, civils and station capital projects.
2006-2008 – Various roles with Metronet Rail Pre-2006 – Bechtel, West Coast Modernisation Project on a two-year secondment to Network Rail, and on the CTRL.
Price has a fi rst class BSc degree in Topographic Science from Swansea University and an MSc in Engineering Surveying from UCL. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
But Price admitted this could still be subject to “negotiation”. He said: “The criteria for the enforcement notice was quite clear: we’re keen to ensure they’re held to account to deliver that.
“They were funded in the control period to deliver that as an output: if they’re going to miss that, we want them to do everything reasonably possible to recover in the next 15 months, before the end of the control period.
“That’s us trying to incentivise them to do the right thing for the passengers. If they don’t, we know full well the words they will use– ‘we’ve done everything reasonably practical’ – and therefore, yes, I’m sure there will be some element of negotiation.
“That’s why, in the Monitor, we’ve fl agged up that there have been own goals – so even if they’ve done everything in their plan, there are things they themselves have done to bring down the performance they could potentially have achieved.”
Performance and passengers
Despite some good news, anyone reading the Monitor could be forgiven for feeling somewhat downcast at the number of problems and delays.
The latest National Passenger Survey, by contrast, published in January and covering journeys in autumn 2012, shows record satisfaction levels – 85% overall.
He told us: “The growth the industry is facing is clearly because a lot of people don’t have any choice about travelling on the railway. So the fact that they’re happy – or getting happier – is good.
“But I still think everyone can do a lot better – and that’s not just Network Rail but some of the train operators have things they need to improve as well.”
Some of this is because of big jumps in satisfaction with things like station facilities, and a small upwards tick in value-for-money satisfaction, but Passenger Focus says that performance is always the biggest driver – so perhaps the Monitor is too negative?
Strategic business plan
If punctuality remains a problem, Network Rail’s enhancements works programme – ‘developing the network’ – is defi nitely in the ‘good news’ category as far as the Monitor is concerned.
This bodes well for 2014-19, Price said.
“It’s good news, because a huge part of the spend for the next CP is enhancements, and there’s a long shopping list that the Government have asked for in the HLOS.
“The downside of that is that a lot of the projects are very immature in terms of their lifecycle: what Network Rail would call GRIP 0 stage, so they don’t actually have any scope.
“I spent this morning with Network Rail working out how we can manage those into the next control
Price said it’s good that the passenger scores are up.
period, so we can make sure we defi ne the scope that delivers the operational benefi ts we want, and we get an effi cient number out of it.
“At the moment, I don’t know what the scope is, so it’s diffi cult to put an effi cient number to it.”
Alan Price
The latest Monitor is at
www.rail-reg.gov.uk FOR MORE INFORMATION
rail technology magazine Apr/May 13 | 23
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