PROJECT MANAGEMENT & BIM
Crossrail’s Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy (TUCA)
The next generation
With the success of RTM’s charity, the UK Rail Industry Training Trust, whose fundraising total has just passed £90,000, we have been asking a number of rail industry leaders for their views on the importance of getting talented young people to consider a career in rail.
Submitting ideas
Pelton discussed the correlations that have been found between the rate of innovation on work sites and more general performance metrics, as well as safety statistics.
The innovation portal,
innovate18.co.uk,
allows anyone involved to submit and share ideas. “We’ve been reasonably broad with allowing access,” Pelton said. “HS2 have access to it for example, enabling them to see and share what’s there.
During the lower-level investment cycle kicking off in April 2013, around six small-scale ideas got approval and funding, after being signed off by a governance team chaired by Crossrail non-executive director Terry Hill of Arup but also including representatives of the tier 1s and Imperial College London.
One of those smaller-scale ideas that got the go-ahead in the autumn was for colour-coded work gloves – red, amber or green depending on the relative risk associated with the activity that person’s involved in.
“You can have all the technology and all the governance you like, it’s the people who in the end make the different. The team I have working for me, the four-man team, part of their role with me is to set up, support and encourage this network of innovation champions. These people are out on all sites, and the contractors all have their innovation champions, some on the client side, some on the contractor side, often shared – which is quite an interesting dimension, because it’s in their mutual interest to develop innovations that benefi t the programme and help to deliver on-time, on-budget, world class and safely, all of which are incentivised across the whole programme.”
He said that the innovation champions have been actively competing with those on other sites to encourage people to submit innovative ideas, adding: “As a positive behaviour, you couldn’t ask for much more.”
94 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 14
Pelton said: “It means when you walk onto the site, whether as foreman or as a visitor, you can see from people’s hands what they’re doing. That’s important, as it changes the way you approach that person. On the back of the glove, there’s a safety message related to the level of risk associated with that colour of glove.”
That innovation is now being prototyped, and looks likely to be approved project-wide. Asked if it might be mandated, Pelton suggested it could be if it improved safety at only nominal
“We had to connect the people, their ideas, and the resources in a positive way, which both helps the ones really worth helping, and demonstrated to the others that there was a chance they might get their idea taken forward.”
Getting the go-ahead
Pelton said it’s something he’s keen on personally, and that he mentors youngsters through the Social Mobility Foundation (CH2M Hill also actively supports Business in the Community and the Employee Ownership Association).
He said people often talk about the “traditions” of the rail industry that might put people off it – but that since he joined, he’s been hard-pressed to really fi nd examples.
He added: “Rail engineering in particular is fi nally, at last, moving into the 21st-century in the extent to which information and data management is applied. People have a sense that if you go to Rolls-Royce, you’re going to be involved in high-tech engine design – and the same is now true of rail. When you see what’s happening to the trains, the rail control systems and the rails themselves – this is cutting-edge technol- ogy and it’s a fantastic place to be.
“The UK is right at the leading edge of this, and the technology is some way removed from the Victorian engineer- ing approach which many people might have in their mind’s eye. Many aspects of rail are moving into the same league as the aerospace industry in terms of the technologies and skill-sets needed.
“It’s an industry with durability: we’re going to have trains, more trains, better trains, for years to come – if you wanted a growth industry, you need look no further.”
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