Alison Munro
A year into his role as head of the ORR, Richard Price tells Katie Silvester how Network Rail is progressing with its efficiency improvements
T
he Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) is in the middle of one of the busiest periods in Network Rail’s funding cycle, which it oversees. The government has just announced its High Level Output Specification (HLOS) for Control Period 5 (2014 to 2019), which sets out what rail projects will be funded (see page 17). The ORR acts as a go-between for the DfT and Network Rail, scrutinising Network Rail’s plans and financial reckoning on behalf of the department. To put it in a nutshell, the DfT says what it wants
DfT in the rail directorate I was the most and only senior woman among what was probably a couple of hundred people, so I feel really passionate about trying to encourage women, because it’s a healthier and more enjoyable working environment if you’ve got a mix, and there’s a great untapped resource out there that we ought to be making the most of. Women quite often have a different perspective, they may not be quite so focused on the technical details but they will be interested in the passenger experience so you don’t have to have an engineering background to be able to make a real contribution in the rail industry because it needs that sort of non-technical input as well.’
Importance of a mentor
I wondered what advice Munro would give to women coming up the ranks in rail and considering that HS2 employs, as she says, ‘some really great women and is doing well in terms of gender balance’.
from Network Rail and the funds that are available. Network Rail comes back and says: ‘We can’t do all this for that amount of money.’ And the ORR negotiates with Network Rail about which bits can be done more cheaply, or delayed, until an agreement is reached about exactly what will go ahead for what cost. At the same time, there is constant pressure on Network Rail to improve its efficiency and reduce its costs.
‘I think one of the things is to seek out opportunities. Senior women in rail have a really important part to play as role models and mentors, so I would encourage younger women to try to find someone to guide them and help them work out the good opportunities. But I think the other thing we need to do is really get the message out there about the interesting jobs there are. I think rail can be seen as rather ‘anoraky’ but actually it really is interesting and it touches everybody’s lives, so we need to be doing more as an industry to attract people into it.’
CEO Richard Price has been in post for just a
year, so this is the first HLOS he has worked on. Network Rail’s job is really only about one thing, reckons Price – asset management. ‘I think Network Rail has achieved a lot over the
HS2 is certainly playing a part in encouraging youngsters into rail, working with schools and universities, and it has recruited its first four apprentices. ‘It’s about building excitement in younger people, because when you look
Exciting times
HS2 Ltd is aiming to deposit the bill for phase one at the end of this year, and is hoping to launch its consultation on phase two (the legs to Manchester and Leeds). ‘So that too is a really positive step,’ says Munro, ‘because it’s showing we are really making progress. London to Birmingham is very much the first phase and it’s not the end of the story.’
at it, they are actually going to be the main beneficiaries of high speed rail. This is a project that won’t be delivered for quite a while yet, so there’s a real opportunity to build enthusiasm with the younger generation to get them attracted into the industry, in a variety of roles, not solely engineering.’
from 90 employees last January to 400 and growing. ‘We’ve got people seconded from the DfT, from Network Rail, and our development partners, so it’s a real mix of different ways of working and therefore important that we as an organisation build our own identity, with our own core values and making sure we make the most of the fantastic range of experience in delivering the project,’ says Munro. ‘And I’ve found it a really fruitful experience and one that is new to me, to work with a strong board that provides great support and experience that you wouldn’t necessarily have in an executive team.’ In terms of her own personal plans and ambitions, without hesitation Munro enthuses, ‘I would really like to be the first passenger on that first train in 2026! So my real ambition is to see this through, not necessarily right through to 2026 but to get the project well on its way. I’ve invested nearly four and a half years in this and I really want to see it come to fruition.’ I’m sure she will.
last decade. It really bears repeating that its costs have already come down over the past 10 years by 40 per cent and it has achieved levels of punctuality across the system. Customer satisfaction is close to record levels and it’s had a transformation in that period and that’s something that it should be proud of.
And HS2 as a company has grown enormously,
‘But there are still huge challenges. Its costs are still too high by any measure. It’s got big challenges in delivering the commitments that it made in the last periodic review, most obviously around punctuality. And it’s got a lot of work to do in ensuring that it really understands its asset base and has world-class management practices. Getting asset management right is the key to unlocking everything else: efficiency, performance, capacity and safety.’ But Price says he is impressed with the approach Network Rail’s new CEO David Higgins is taking to asset management.
A big part of Price’s job is to drive Network Rail’s efficiency targets. Various studies have found that the infrastructure owner’s European counterparts are usually able to run their operations more cheaply than Network Rail – and a key part of the McNulty value-for-money study focused on finding ways >
June 2013 Page 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132