Simon Kirby, Network Rail’s managing director, infrastructure projects, spoke in the rail engineer seminar theatre at Infrarail recently and outlined his thoughts and objectives for the new Network Rail Infrastructure Projects business which he is setting up. It will have quite an impact on the industry, so it is worth reporting what he had to say.

He started by reminding his listeners that rail is a growth industry. “We used to use a statistic there’s more people using the railways now since the second world war – there’s actually more people using the railways now than there ever has been on what clearly is a smaller infrastructure, a more closely packed infrastructure, and a lot of what we are doing is around capacity – it’s about addressing many of those issues created by that growth.”

However, as Simon commented: “Rail is a fantastic place to be at the moment”, and he reported that discussions with government around funding are very positive in terms of seeing rail as one of the ways of stimulating economic growth.

Network Rail’s performance in this control period is on track in terms of reducing cost, and Simon emphasised that there is a firm commitment to reduce costs further by 2014. Safety is an absolute priority, but delivering the programme safely, at lower cost, is forcing Network Rail to look to change and be more collaborative in the future.

Into the future

Looking at CP5 and into the future, Simon stated that Network Rail will be “A fundamentally different company by the end of 2012”. It has already devolved its route operations into separate business units. Route managing directors are in place across the country, focused on customer engagement while running and operating the assets of a high performing railway.

Over time, different relationships will evolve in different ways, depending on the specifics of that route. Simon believes that Network Rail will become more of a group of companies, and in some routes will be more connected with its customers from a business perspective. In fact, there has recently been an announcement on an alliance with South West Trains, the first example of that type of relationship.

However, he is mindful that it is very important to remember the network-wide benefits of running a national railway system, so Network Rail will still have a key role in terms of running Britain’s railways apart from the devolved routes.

As part of that role, Network Rail is creating a separate project business which he outlined to his audience. It is aligned regionally with the route businesses, as the new routes are the prime customers of the new Infrastructure Projects business. There are four regional areas, Scotland and the North East, Central, Western and Southern. They are not route-based, mainly because of economies of scale and some technical reasons behind some of the projects, but are regionally-based with route delivery directors supporting each of the key customers.

Signalling remains a national programme because it is of strategic importance, and also because there are design resources all around the country that can work on projects wherever they are in England, Scotland and Wales.

Additionally, there are still two major outstanding programmes, Thameslink and FTN/GSM-R. Both are currently at critical stages of their development and these will remain under central control.

Clear and accountable relationships

Organisationally, there would have to be changes. “To actually have a competitive market though, bearing in mind our key client will be Network Rail, we have to separate the Infrastructure Project business into a separate subsidiary company”. He said that a lot of work is currently going into that, and the plan is to make the change next year to enable true competition by having a separate subsidiary company with its own systems and financial controls to be able to operate in that environment.

One of the main changes is that this year, for the first time, the four regions, will have profit and loss accounts and will be run as businesses with accountable management teams. As Simon said: “For me, it’s about giving those people more accountability, decentralising the organisation”.

There will still be a central organisation of course, but it will be under half the size of the organisation of a couple of months ago. Responsibility will be moved into the regions with some support from the centre, rather than having the centre running the business.

So why is this being done? “It is about CP5 and the future. It’s about creating an organisation that frankly people want to work with – an organisation that is delivering value through a more competitive market. Running a monopoly organisation, it’s virtually impossible to demonstrate value for money – you can benchmark things but clearly, ultimately, competition is the only way we believe we can do that. So opening the market up as part of this process to competition on some of our projects is one of the key elements of the reason behind doing it.”

There will also be earlier and greater engagement with partners. As an example, Simon cited the London Bridge project on Thameslink. “We start construction in 2013 next year and, as of last year, all of our key partners, certainly at first tier and in some cases at second or third tier, are now involved in the design process helping to deliver hopefully a safer and more constructable solution. I do believe by getting the people involved in the construction in the design has to be the right thing from a safety performance point of view.”

Opening up competition

All this will open up the market in terms of new suppliers. Moving into CP5, elements that Investment Projects delivered by right under the old organisation will now be opened up to contestability. So the Infrastructure Projects organisation will be competing in the market for projects alongside existing partners and new market entrants. It is obviously about lower unit costs, and bringing new suppliers and technology into projects will deliver those benefits.

Simon thinks that, as Network Rail forges closer relationships with its suppliers, it will potentially have fewer partners in the future than it did in the past. He believes that is almost inevitable as more framework contracts are placed, but, as he said, “Hopefully that will enable longer term planning in those partner organisations. We’ll have much closer projections of work and people will know what they’ve got to deliver, not just next month but next year and the year beyond, so they can plan resources and train people for that.”

International interest

Network Rail also has a low-key international agenda. “One of the areas we’ve been looking at, and we’ve decided we’re going to move into, we get asked every couple of months by someone somewhere in the world can we help advise on a rail project. Normally by governments or a government agency, and sometimes actually by consultant engineers who comment that organisations like DB, SNCF, NTR are in that sort of space and we’re not. So we’re looking at creating an international consultancy business to really work in partnership with other consultancies to deliver that type of advisory service.”

It will be on a small scale to start with, but Simon hopes it will change perceptions of Network Rail in terms of being engaged in international projects around the world.

Organisationally, there would have to be changes. “To actually have a competitive market though, bearing in mind our key client will be Network Rail, we have to separate the Infrastructure Project business into a separate subsidiary company.” He said that a lot of work is currently going into that, and the plan is to make that change next year to enable true competition by having a separate subsidiary company with its own systems and financial systems to be able to operate in that environment.

Not the only player

And so, by the end of next year, Network Rail Infrastructure Projects is looking to compete for projects. Simon put it like this: “Ultimately in CP5 we will be a major player, but not the only player, in developing and delivering projects for Network Rail. Without giving you the wrong perception though, the higher value/higher risk projects, the Thameslinks, the Readings, that type of thing, there’s certainly no plans at present to compete at that sort of level in terms of taking output and taking capital risk. But smaller, low value projects that’s certainly the plan and something we’ll work on with the pilots over the next 18 months.”

To do that, a different type of strategy was announced about a year ago in March. It is about “Safer delivery, driving down costs, introducing more innovative solutions, reducing scope variations because we have got much more aligned objectives between ourselves, our consultants and our contractors in one project rather than having potentially different objectives. This is about aligning our risks and our financial objectives to create one high-performing group of teams.

“And clearly reducing duplication and resources is happening now – I’ve been to a few projects recently where Network Rail staff are working for contractors or consultants who are then working for a Network Rail manager, and vice versa, so its great to see that and that is already delivering benefits for both Network Rail and some of its partners on some of our projects.”

Learning from Europe

To work out the best formula for alliancing, Simon Kirby reported that Network Rail conducted an investigation about 18 months ago which looked at different projects around Europe in transport, in rail and in different types of infrastructure. It looked at why certain models worked and certain models didn’t, and developed a seven stage model that goes all the way from complete outsourcing to a joint business limited company relationship.

“Most of our focus at the moment, though, is very much in more collaborative working, either in pure closer engagement all the way through to a number of alliances with shared risks and shared objectives which we’ve now got in place.

“There’s certainly a commitment to do this, but we do believe, to get to where we want to get to, we do need longer term relationships. Things will go wrong, things will work, and we need to learn from that.”

Simon is very mindful that Network Rail, as a client, needs to have an appetite for innovation. It needs engineers who want that innovation and understand where it’s right or wrong to apply that innovation and that’s obviously a cultural issue which needs more focus.

Transparency and collaboration

It also needs openness and transparency. According to Simon, Network Rail is publishing a lot more information now and will continue to do so going forwards. He said that more aligned objectives are needed, and that is the focus at project level. Different forms of contract are being developed for alliances, after much study of other forms of contract used across other sectors and other utilities such as electricity and water.

However, as a client, Simon admits that Network Rail can only really enter into these relationships when it understands, at the start of the project, what the costs of that project should be. A lot of work will need to go into benchmarking and cost build up. There will be much more emphasis on behaviour and technical competence and a target cost compared with a few years ago. In his opinion, the key objective is to demonstrate value for money, so there is a real need to understand the costs of programmes.

Network Rail achieved BS11000 a couple of months ago, the first infrastructure client company to achieve that. “It’s not about the certificate though, its about things being different on the ground,” Simon commented. “And for those who know the model, it really does cover all aspects from strategic issues all the way through to awareness and ultimately, if things go really wrong, how do you disengage from the relationship. It is assessed by a third party, it is done collaboratively with our partners, and I’m very pleased to say that we have now achieved that on a number of programmes.

“It is all about aligned objectives, and as a client organisation it’s about people understanding our objectives and vice versa, and we are seeing innovation now starting to come through in a number of areas on the work we are doing.”

Simon finished off by speaking directly to Network Rail’s contractors. “But for me it’s about engagement – it’s about understanding what you need and my teams understanding what you need – in the new world in the new Infrastructure Projects business.”

The Forth Rail Bridge is located nine miles to the west of Edinburgh. It is regarded as a crowning achievement of Victorian steel bridge building and its robust cantilever structure was designed to combat the high winds that had caused the failure of the Tay Bridge with significant loss of life eleven years earlier in 1879.

The bridge is composed of 54,000 tonnes of open-hearth steel. The world’s first-ever steel bridge, it was opened in 1890 when the future King Edward VII travelled to Edinburgh to hammer in the last of 6.5 million rivets. It has a surface area of 45 acres, and this led to one of the most persistent British urban myths; the legend that the moment workmen finish painting the Forth Rail Bridge they cross back over the estuary to begin painting the other end anew. This is one fable that can finally be debunked in 2012 after a £130 million, ten year project which fully refurbished the structure. After shot-blasting away 40 previous paint layers across the 2,500-metre cantilever structure, a 400-strong team applied 240,000 litres of durable epoxy paint to the bridge, which will now not need another coat for 20 years.

Health and safety considerations, as well as the need to avoid disruption to Train Operating Companies (TOCs) by minimising downtime on train movements have been the principal concerns of Balfour Beatty Regional Civil Engineering, who were the main contractor to Network Rail on the project. On average, there are between 180 and 200 train movements daily as the bridge is the principal artery between Edinburgh and Fife – and it had to be kept open at all times.

Automated warnings

Balfour Beatty entrusted track warning systems, safety procedures and safety maintenance to Vital Rail who provided a Safety Critical Management Team and associated support. Up until the completion of the painting and refurbishment, Vital supplied, maintained and operated an Automated Track Warning System (ATWS) across the length of the bridge. Indeed, the ATWS became an integral part of the bridge’s maintenance system during the works.

Vital’s activity on the project was co-ordinated from the company’s office in Bellshill, near Glasgow. The Vital Rail site supervisor for the project was Alan Richardson, who said: “The culture on the bridge is that your colleague will do anything for you. Previously, operatives had acted as lookouts for each other, so putting absolute trust in the Automated Track Warning System was a new way of thinking. The crew realised that, however much their opposite number wanted to support them, he could be fallible. The ATWS technology does not tire or have a ‘bad day’. When the men realised this, the equipment actually began to contribute to their peace of mind.”

The ATWS sirens which warned of an approaching train had to compete with wind, riveting and shotblasting. It was therefore a crucial feature of the Autoprowa™ automatic proportional warning system from ZÖLLNER Signal Systems Technologies that the microphones had the “intelligence” to evaluate ambient noise levels, and adjust the volume of warning signals accordingly. The ZÖLLNER system used on the bridge has been approved in Europe by a respected panel of independent safety assessors, Technischer Überwachungs-Verein (TÜV), and is fully accepted by Network Rail.

Automatic activation

Graham Gillan, Vital Rail’s ATWS manager, said: “Vital used a hard-wired fully automatic ATWS solution on this occasion. As a train neared the work site, the detector placed on the track would be activated when the train wheels ran over the treadle and audible warnings would combine with flashing beacons. This approach factored out human error. Dual redundancy was crucial so twin devices were installed at the ‘sighting distance’ based on speed and time in order to give the workforce – particularly scaffolders – adequate warning to secure their equipment. At the approach of a train, Balfour Beatty staff and their subcontractors working on the track, deck level and right up to the top gantries, would cease all activity.”

Graham continued: “At the end of the work site there was a strikeout treadle which cancelled the warning that had been generated. This approach proved crucial in an environment characterised by constant fog and sea fret. Not being reliant on visibility reduced downtime dramatically. Vital Rail also supplied safety critical personnel and track labour to contractors who needed to move materials around the bridge. All our staff have their PTS (Personal Track Safety) certification and where appropriate they also had Control of Site Safety (COSS) qualifications. Senior management from Vital formulated safe system of work plans and, in addition to Balfour Beatty, we briefed the various disciplines such as Pyeroy (painting)( and ThyssenKrupp Palmer (scaffolding).”

Useful RRVs

A significant aspect of Vital Rail’s work during the bridge refurbishment involved the introduction of road-rail vehicles (RRVs) for moving materials, leading to a reduction in the health and safety risks associated with manual handling. This approach is also being introduced by Network Rail through its own RRV Safety Improvement Programme, notably during a recent RRV exclusion zone workshop at the Westwood training centre near Coventry.

The main benefit of use of the RRVs, which are manufactured by Liebherr and Colmar, has been the reduction in manual handling and the associated risk of injury, which cannot be factored out however rigorous the safety protocols. Moving 15 tons of equipment on a single vehicle up to 320 yards at a time across a cantilever to the main works allowed Balfour Beatty to meet both safety and commercial objectives simultaneously.

Colin Hardie is a Construction Manager at Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering who has worked on the bridge for a decade. He said: “The breadth of offering from Vital Rail became apparent as they helped us implement a site-specific safety regime and put all staff through rigorous, tailored induction courses. This is a unique environment that is unlike any bridge, trackside or depot work our staff have encountered. Vital supervisors have helped us with the very occasional man-management issue but what has been really impressive is the rapport they have shown with all the contractors and trades here.”

Alan Richardson said: “The North Queensferry side of the bridge is particularly prone to fog and all parties agreed that the ATWS introduced by Vital Rail produced substantial savings across the board. Working conditions here are as tough as a any painter or scaffolder is likely to encounter anywhere in the world. The track is 45 metres above the firth, and while an operative will be aware that he is near water, he may not be able to see it which can be disorientating. Before any painting could be done, a crew had to be screened off from the environment in encapsulated areas supported by several tons of complex access scaffolding. The logistical and safety implications were complex. The days of there being a permanent railway ‘colony’ of fifty families in cottages at the east end of South Queensferry are gone, but even with the refurbishment project finished, Vital Rail will continue to have a responsibility for safety here as we have had since 2004.”

Writes Steve Wiskin

Generally speaking, initiatives are designed to solve a problem in the short term and then they disappear. Considering how important safety is, when Atkins developed the Safe by Choice programme (SbC), it was conceived, not as a short-term solution, but as a way to change people’s behaviour, so that safey would be at the forefront of people’s minds. While it has been a challenge, four years on, SbC has proven to be successful, not just in Atkins, but the in the wider industry as well.

Creating a safety mindset?

SbC is a behavioural-based programme which challenges staff actions to reduce the chance of accidents occurring. The aim for Atkins was to create a safer working environment, the ultimate goal to embed a “do something” attitude, or being Safe by Choice. The programme works by giving staff a “tool kit” to challenge unsafe acts effectively so that they take ownership and responsibility for not only their own safety, but the safety of those around them.

Making SbC a sustainable idea

The SbC programme was initially delivered to Atkins’ UK rail business. To ensure buy-in from all levels, a series of workshops was developed and rolled out to everyone from site operatives to the leadership team so that everyone could play their part. It was important that everyone was on board to bring about a real cultural change.

While each workshop differs, the core emphasis of all four are the same – bringing about a “safety first” philosophy. These workshops actively challenge the reasons why unsafe choices are made by exploring why people take short cuts or risks at work. It has been found that this is much more effective than just telling staff to be safe. The workshops cover safety leadership, key influencers, developing influence and an overview of the SbC programme.

Of course, workshops were just one part of the strategy. To reinforce the SbC message and to maintain awareness of the programme, an internal communications campaign was undertaken. This included comic strip style posters and emails highlighting everyday choices about safety, such as wearing high visibility clothing. The programme has also been further reinforced by the introduction of job descriptions which give ownership and responsibility to key influencers across the business. This enables them to consistently raise awareness of any potential dangers in the workplace and report accordingly.

Safety is a choice

The SbC programme has proven to be very successful, with a major increase in the number of close calls being reported in the business since the programme began in 2007/2008. A close call is an unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness or damage – but had potential to do so. This increase in close call reporting indicates that staff and contractors to whom the programme has been delivered so far, now numbering around two thousand, are much more aware of safety and are actively taking steps to prevent accidents.

SbC Safety Award

Having successfully communicated the SbC message to all rail staff, Atkins has also introduced the annual SbC Safety Award. Now in its third year, the award recognises staff who put safety first by reporting close calls. Previous winners of the award have included a member of staff who helped two children to safety after they tried to take a shortcut to a playground through open train tracks. Another Atkins employee asked a member of the public to move to a safe place on a train platform after he noticed her sitting on the platform edge, oblivious to the fact that a train was approaching.

Winners of the award receive £250, plus £250 for their chosen charity. By recognising staff who report close calls, this award is just another way in which we have been able to embed the SbC campaign throughout the business.

Keeping the momentum going

To keep SbC at the forefront of people’s minds during the second and third year of the programme, the workshops, SbC Safety Awards and internal marketing campaign all continued. But it was now time to challenge the supply chain on their approach to safety.

To do this, a number of key suppliers were invited to a safety forum during which the SbC programme was introduced to them and they were asked about their own programmes to ensure that staff work safely. Those suppliers were then sent a formal letter, encouraging them to take the next steps in embedding safety in their own businesses.

Both the forum and letter were well received, with some suppliers such as BCM, VGC and Kelly deciding to roll out their own versions of SbC. Likewise, the success of SbC has also been acknowledged by industry partners including Network Rail and London Underground.
While the industry at large has taken to Atkins’ SbC programme, the delivery of the programme is not designed for profit, just safety. Any financial reward stemming from its delivery is reinvested in the development and improvement of the programme itself.

The future looks safe

Workplace safety is not just limited to staff who work on railway tracks, it involves everyone from administration staff to designers and the management team. While safety has always been a part of Atkins’ design and management processes, in 2012 the safety team is establishing two other distinct approaches: Safe by Design (SbD) and Safe by Leadership (SbL). SbD will ensure that safety is embedded within the thought process of designers and that risk is actively identified and managed. SbL will make certain that senior managers and directors lead by example and engage with staff and contractors, as well as seek to influence industry to improve standards.

So, SbC is not an initiative. During the past four years, the message has been constantly reinforced and is now very much a part of every Atkins employee’s mindset. Behavioural change takes time, but is well worth the effort.

When thinking about work practices, the question is: “Do I work safely?” The answer is usually always “yes”.

The next question is: “Am I safely working?”, meaning – does safety have equal priority to production? It’s certainly something worth considering, after all, safety is everyone’s responsibility.

For more information contact Steve Wiskin at [email protected]