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When it comes to the number of Pendolini available for the June 2002 timetable Alstom has told Virgin ‘take the number you first thought of and half it'.
It was during a visit to Birmingham back in 1998, after a briefing on the Virgin Pendolino contract from Project Director Peter Sizer and his team, that I expressed doubts that all 53 production units would be delivered and in service by the start of the 2002 Summer Timetable.
Several pair of eyes bored into me during the ensuing silence. Finally, someone asked ‘How many do you think we will have delivered?'. I pondered before saying ‘45' and they all wrote it down in a meaningful way.
Hey, ho, that's me, ever the optimist. Because the latest number, underwritten by Alstom in Deputy President Dr Mike Lloyd's blood, is 29.
While Pendolino is an established design, the British variant incorporates a number of changes, will run on different infrastructure and will have to pass through the toughest vehicle acceptance process in Europe.
So Alstom and Fiat prudently wrote two pre-series trains into the contract and, presciently, decided to buy the Old Dalby Test Track and turn it into the Pendolino Test Centre.
Pre-series trains are only of value if the lessons learned can be incorporated without having to take dozens of production trains to bits for retrospective modifications. So what was called the Pre-Series ‘A' train (subsequently No 00) was due to roll out in February 2000, or this year as we call it, and start test running in June. It would be followed by 01, the second pre–series train.
Then in January or February 2001, or three to four months time as we call it, the first production train was supposed to roll out with contractual delivery due in May 2001. Delivery of one train a week throughout 2001 would give Virgin 53 production units by 2 June 2002. The pre series trains would then be fitted out to production standards.
Well, as you may have noticed, Train 00 did not roll out in February. Nor was it ready to be shown to the press on Sir Richard Branson's Birthday in July.
Then the roll out was going to be 6 October and then it wasn't. So on 4 September the Alstom top brass were summoned to Virgin Group's Holland Park headquarters and asked what they were playing at.
Virgin were very, very cross. How cross? Well, according to Informed Sources Alstom were told that Sir Richard was minded to turn up at Washwood Heath with the world's press on 6 October and if 00 wasn't ready Alstom could explain the wasted journey.
Meanwhile, you may have noted from this column and Moving Wheels, that all the other contracts at Washwood Heath weren't looking too clever either. And eventually Alstom Transport's head office, hereinafter referred to as ‘Paris', noticed this too – probably because of the £250million overdraft they were having to cover to fund all those trains that Birmingham had built but couldn't get anyone to pay for.
So, at the end of August, Paris sent a high level hit team to audit its UK train building subsidiary. Progress with each contract was evaluated in detail and within each contract outstanding risks were identified on a scale of one to five. And there were an awful lot of fives and not just in the Pendolino contract.
But, in terms of value, penalties and the potential to wreck Alstom's international image as a train builder, Pendolino was the big one.
As explained in the separate excoriation of Railtrack, Virgin's immediate problem with late delivery is not commercial, though that is bad enough, but operational. Final bids for the June 2002 West Coast Main Line timetable should have been in by now. But until Virgin knew how many Pendolini diagrams it would be able to operate it could not make a sensible bid.
Don't forget that tilting trains running at 125mile/h will eat up fast line capacity. Every missing Pendolino would mean a 110mile/h loco-hauled train unable to keep to time and getting in the way of whatever Pendolini <ital>were<ital> running.
So Virgin's timetable bid had to be based on an assured number of Pendolini diagrams. And Virgin had to be able to look Railtrack in the eye when handing it in.
With Virgin so exposed Alstom was presented with demands, not requests. The first was for Alstom to make a Board Level public commitment to the minimum number of Pendolini commissioned and in service in June 2002. To Virgin, ‘high level' meant Alstom Transport President Michel Moreau.
But, delivery was not to be at the expense of development, so the second demand was that the period between the start of test running with 00 and delivery of the first production train must be preserved.
On September 11 Virgin had separate four hour review meetings with its two train builders, seeking firm commitments from both.
In the case of Alstom, the commitment was to have 29 trains commissioned for the 2002 Summer timetable to cover 22 diagrams. The rest of the fleet would be in service by November.
But Alstom's press release making this commitment public, fell short of Virgin's aspiration. Instead of M. Moreau, the commitment was in the name of Deputy President Dr Mike Lloyd.
According to Informed Sources, M. Moreau had indeed backed the commitment to Virgin, but in retrospect it was unrealistic to expect a Frenchman to put his reputation on the line for a troubled British subsidiary so publicly. And had not M. Lloyd been put in overall charge at Washwood Heath when the Virgin contract was signed? So who better to take the glory or the opprobrium?
With this strengthened team we are delighted to reaffirm our commitment to deliver 29 Pendolinos by May 2002 and the full fleet of 53 by November 2002.
Mike Lloyd September 13 2000 |
Backing the commitment was a shake-up of the Pendolino project team. Bruno Sol-Rolland, currently Managing Director of the Alstom Transportation high speed train business unit, will head up what is called a ‘new project organisation'. This is already in place at Alstom subsidiaries in France and Spain.
In Alstom-speak the change will give the Washwood Heath plant ‘a project structure best suited to the production phase of the project including delivery and commissioning'. The existing Pendolino project team will also be supplemented by engineers and managers from Alstom's French and Spanish organisations.
Meanwhile, Virgin's insistence on pre-series running before deliveries start makes it unlikely that Washwood Heath will able to meet the revised production schedule on its own, so a parallel fitting out line at Alstom's Barcelona plant is planned. Fortunately, one of Mike Lloyd's innovations has been a common assembly line ‘footprint' throughout the Group.
Meanwhile, completion of No 00 is scheduled for February 2001, a full 12 months late, followed by No 01 in April. All test running is likely to take place at Old Dalby, where the track is being upgraded for 140mile/h as well as electrified.
Man in the hot seatAn awful lot of corporate reputations are riding on the shoulders of Alstom's Bruno Sol-Rolland who now has 583 days to rescue Virgin Rail's aspirations by commissioning 29 trains, while getting the design through the vehicle approvals process from hell. He certainly has all the right T-shirts in his wardrobe and comes highly recommended by the Informed Sources network. Sol-Rolland was one of the top echelon on the Eurostar programme, responsible to the Project Director for depot issues, the modification programme, configuration control and commissioning. After Eurostar, Sol-Rolland woked in the United States on the American Flyers, the Alstom/Bombardier high speed tilting trains for the North East Corridor All this, not leastperience of the UK safety case regime, should stand him in good stead as Pendolino goes through the hoops. Although this experience is coming on for 10 years old, the only changes second time round will have been for the worse. |
At opening of Design Studio November 1998Pre-series train (No 00) Completed February 2000 Delivered to test track May 2000 First series train (No 02) Completed February 2001 Interim safety case February 2001 Certification completed May 2001 Production completed March 2002
Alstom commitment September 2000Pre-Series train deliveries No 00 February 2001 No 01 April 2001 First series train (No 02) Delivered August 2001* 29 production trains delivered May 2002 53 production trains delivered November 2002
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*Informed Sources guesstimate
Assuming that the original one train a week output can be met, a quick calculation suggests that the first Series Production train will be handed over in August 2001, four months behind the contractual delivery date. This would give only three to four months of development train running before production kit starts arriving, which probably is not enough.
Theoretically, delivery of the production trains could be put back to give a six months gap, while still meeting the 29 trains by June 2002 commitment with Washwood Heath and Barcelona fitting out in parallel. But then, you risk creating a bottle neck on commissioning, driver training and shakedown running.
But there I some good news on the Virgin trains front. The Class 220 Voyager got its Design (D) Acceptance certificate at the beginning of October at the first try and at around the same car a four car unit ran under its own power on short test track at Bombardier's Brugge factory.
But will Virgin's trains be able to run at 125 with tilt in operation anyway come 2002? Read on.