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| RAIL PROFESSIONAL INTERVIEW
Interview
Elaine Clark, CEO of Rail Forum Midlands Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Elaine Clark, CEO of Rail Forum Midlands (RFM), about The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail and what it could mean for the private sector companies that support the running of the railway Elaine Clark is CEO of Rail Forum Midlands (RFM). A Chartered Engineer, Elaine spent a number of years in the chemical industry before joining the power sector immediately post privatisation. As a senior member of the Ratcliffe on Soar management team Elaine was involved in major change programmes followed by heading up Powergen’s commercial training business. She then spent 20 years in training and skills including as Managing Director of a leading SME training provider growing the business from £1m to over £7m turnover. Elaine leads the RFM team and is responsible for our strategy, delivery of the rail sector deal initiatives and ensuring we are supporting our members across our range of activities. RFM is a national industry body with strong regional connections including supporting the nationally and internationally important rail supply chain cluster across the Midlands; RFM has over 270 members providing products and services across all aspects of the industry. RFM actively supports the national rail agenda and strategy, encouraging collaboration, promoting members’ capabilities, leading a number of regional skills initiatives and supporting innovation and export priorities. RFM is owned and governed by its members with a Board drawn from member companies. What was your response when you first read the ‘Plan for Rail’? 20th May saw the publication of the long awaited Williams Review; with a revised title of The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail. And so ended the waiting….or did it? The Plan included the creation of the ‘industry guiding mind’ that everyone was expecting but it was light on detail and I wonder, having read it, how many people were left thinking ‘be careful what you wish for’? I don’t want to go through the ten key outcomes or the six key problems identified by Keith Williams. Nor am I going to focus on customers; which are quite rightly front Rail Professional
and centre in the document. Instead let’s consider how the Plan might affect the many hundreds of private sector companies that support the running of the railway. It’s worth remembering that the supply chain was never a major feature for the Review. Driven by the May 2018 timetable issues and franchising failures the focus was always going to be on passengers and freight customers and hence how the railway could be run better for those end users. But clearly the Plan, and how it’s brought to life, will have a major impact on the supply chain so let’s explore some of the key opportunities and risks. When established, Great British Railways (GBR) will be a very large and powerful entity with much of the authority and decision-making at regional level. The immediate assumption, and the way that most people will envisage GBR, will be to think of a bigger version of Network Rail that incorporates large numbers of people from the Department for Transport. It will also absorb numerous existing Train Operating Company activities. The leadership and culture of this new organisation will be critical for the success of the Plan and for the supply chain. The Plan hints at a step change in performance, how do you think we will achieve that? We need a GBR that embraces new contracting strategies, including a greater focus on output and performance-based specifications. Put simply GBR needs to trust the supply chain to do the job they are being asked to do and let them get on with it. This approach would lead to a stronger and healthier supplier base; but it will require a significant investment in the skills development of the teams responsible for procurement together with those in contract and project management in the new GBR. The Plan commits to producing a 30-year strategy that will set longer- term priorities. Whilst work on this is already underway
it’s not due to be completed until 2022 and the implementation won’t really start until, say, 2024 with the commencement of CP7 and following the formal creation of GBR. This intervening time period is incredibly important to suppliers. We shouldn’t allow planned projects to be delayed whilst we wait for the strategy to be finalised. Suppliers, both infrastructure and rolling stock, need a reasonably steady stream of work. This helps drive productivity and quality improvements, investment in innovation, new technology and skills and ultimately means companies survive and thrive. What do you expect to happen during the intervening period? The two-year National Rail Contracts may provide some stability for the rolling stock/ passenger operations market but again it will be important to ensure that planned projects aren’t shelved in the short term. With evidence building that the rolling stock supply chain is under some stress as work starts to dry up; time is of the essence. If the wait for the 30-year strategy is allowed to become an excuse for delaying investment this will have a hugely detrimental impact on the industry’s ability
