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When it comes to organisation, old BR is the new privatisation
Before losing his job as Railtrack's Chief Operating Officer (and amazingly Railtrack forgot to tell Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate that he was leaving), Jonson Cox's big idea was to impose a fashionably ‘flat' management structure on the railway with 18 areas reporting to headquarters. ‘What a brilliant idea' I told anyone within hearing range, ‘reintroduce Divisions after all the effort BR spent replacing the Regional/Divisional structure with an integrated business'.
Apart from the fact that railways, like armies, work best as hierarchies, there was a more practical objection. The lost generation of privatisation, all those consultants and globe trotting youthful railway pensioners, means that there aren't enough good people to make 18 Areas work as autonomous units reporting to head office.
And, glory be, at the end of August, Railtrack Chief Executive Steven Marshall, told staff that the plan to reorganise the seven Zones into '15-18' areas had been shelved. ‘Our continuing work has shown this to have real drawbacks', he said.
Instead Railtrack is to pilot the reintroduction of Bob Reid's bete noire – the Regions - and see how back to the future plays. The current London North Eastern and Anglia Zones are to be merged to re-create the Eastern Region and Southern Zone has to become Southern Region. Robin Gisby and Michael Holden, the respective Zone Directors, take over as Eastern and Southern Region Directors.
Day to day responsibility for the Regions' operational performance will rest with Area General Managers. Eastern Region will have four Areas and Southern Region three, the SR areas (Kent/Sussex/Wessex) reflecting the south of the Thames franchise geography – or the private company territories before the 1923 grouping if you are feeling mischievous.
Eastern Region's four Areas will see the East Coast Main Line divided in the middle and the current Anglia Zone making up the other two, probably Great Eastern/LTS Rail and West Anglia to Stansted and Kings Lynn.
Area General Managers will have responsibility for operations, safety, production and maintenance while the Regional HQ focuses on major engineering, project management and operations planning. AGM's responsibilities will be ‘narrower but deeper'.
Of course, the key to this sort of structure rests in the Regional Manager knowing in the words of the late great Bob Reid ‘who the cowboys are'. But this structure does provide a career progression within which managers can grow. That said, Regions and areas are still a retrograde step to us 0forQ recidivists.
One of the problems of privatisation has been the drain of management talent referred to in last month's Railtalk. Railtrack's HQ has also had a strong centripetal effect for the remaining talent and Steve Marshall is planning to do a Chairman Mao and send the intellectuals there out to plant rice in the paddy fields.
Marshall 's new Chairman John Robinson has made no secret of his unhappiness at the large number of people Railtrack employs to answer all the Rail Regulator's questions and track delay attribution. The Rail Regulator himself points out that if Railtrack did its job properly he wouldn't have to chivvy and chase. So putting expertise where it can affect the game, rather than wrangle about the score, could break the circle of blame.
When the lease on the Black Tower of Euston runs out next year, Marshall is looking to move a reduced HQ to team somewhere smaller, with fewer floors, ‘where we can create a greater sense of team and involvement'. This would be part of a ‘good look at the corporate centre' aimed at reducing ‘cost and complexity'. Substantial savings' are expected.
An overlooked black hole for talent is the bloated Strategic Rail Authority which is set to become marginalized by the new Railway Strategy Division being set up by the Railways Directorate within the Department for Transport, Local Government & the Regions. There will also be a Railways Sponsorship Division to handle the funding of the Strategy Division's err, strategy.
This demonstrates the law that politicians abhor a vacuum and reminds me that some unkind wit remarked that the SRA's much vaunted SPV stood not for Special Purpose Vehicle but for Strategic Policy Vacuuum. And since the SRA has signally failed to come up with a strategy, and I doubt whether the Strategic Plan promised for November will a) happen or if it does will b) be any practical use at all, you can understand why DTLR wants to re-establish the old mantra ‘The man in Whitehall knows best'.
In which case, those people with titles like Director Rail Development this or that at the SRA could also be encouraged to join the toiling masses in the paddy field.
LibDems' new spin on safety responsibilityHere's a worrying thought for readers who live in houses on curves, Tee-junctions or even under flight paths. There's an elected politician out there, and an elected politician who speaks on transport for his party, who believes that if a bus goes straight on when it should have turned left or right, or a lorry swerves to avoid something in the road, and ends up embedded in your front parlour, it's your fault for not having had the foresight to erect a suitable barrier in front of the privet hedge. Well, Tom Brake MP , Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Minister, didn't actually say that. But that is the reductio ad absurdem of his comments on the case of the lorry which, allegedly, swerved to avoid a fox, left the road, ploughed through some trees down an embankment and ended up in flames on the West Coast Main Line south of Bletchley. According to a LibDem press release headed RAILTRACK CAN'T COPE WITH RESPONSIBILITY FOR SAFETY – BRAKE, the MP said “This is the second serious incident of this nature in the last few months. “As a matter of urgency Railtrack needs to conduct a risk assessment into the vulnerability of their railway lines. “This crash reinforces the case for taking the responsibility for safety issues away from Railtrack. Travellers need to be certain that there is no conflict between safety and profitability.” That last sentence is a classic case of opening mouth before engaging brain. For a start, road safety is the responsibility of the Highways Agency and local Government. Is Brake saying that Railtrack should, unilaterally, erect crash barriers where a car or lorry going out of control could land on the railway? Should Railtrack lobby for Parliamentary powers which would allow it to require local authorities to install safety measures at locations identified at high risk – much as the railway is required by law to install TPWS? Is he saying that bridge bashes are Railtrack's fault too, because they are predictable?. Is he saying that Railtrack should be allowed to install sacrificial girders ahead of vulnerable bridges to slice the top off any approaching over-height pantechnicon or double-decker school bus. And what should this risk assessment cover? What mistakes by drivers should it assume? Mechanical failures? Lorries on overbridges toppled in high winds? And why stop at roads? Going past Birmingham International the other day, I looked out of the window and there coming towards me (and runway 15) at around 400 ft was a high-wing twin turboprop. For heaven's sake, how can Railtrack be allowed to run trains under the flight path? But isn't ridiculing a LibDem spokesman, a bit like breaking a butterfly on a wheel? Well, no, because there is a serious point for the Department for Transport, Local Government & the Regions to address which Brake diminishes. And the cut and paste final knee jerk paragraph also gives the chance to impose an awful joke upon the long suffering readership. It was clearly a case of an automatic hot air Brake. Sorry.
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