RSSB member story
Interview
Part 2:
The need for speed
RSSB continues its conversation with Network Rail’s Christian Irwin OBE to find out why post-Covid Britain needs a rail industry with a different mindset.
Christian Irwin OBERail Investment Centre of Excellence Director, Network Rail
In the August issue of Horizon, RSSB met Christian Irwin OBE, Director of Network Rail’s Rail Investment Centre of Excellence. We discussed why his time at Network Rail made him a key player in its plans to save time and money.
In the second and final part of our interview with Christian, he explains how Network Rail’s SPEED project is helping to achieve much-needed changes in rail investment so Network Rail can work with industry to get projects off the ground cheaper and quicker, winning passengers back to the network.
SPEED as a project started in June 2020, but Network Rail had been migrating to this over the previous year or so. We had recently gone through the Putting Passengers First Programme, which focused on us becoming more passenger-led than infrastructure-led. The thinking about how we tackle rail investment was a big part of that. We decided to evolve how we deliver projects, from a big national organisation to five regional organisations.
When the government’s Build Back Better campaign was launched in June 2020, we started to think about the need for speed – investing in rail efficiently and effectively. We were going through an unprecedent economic challenge and we needed to get the most out of every pound we put in the ground. So, the SPEED (swift, pragmatic and efficient enhancement delivery) project was formed in partnership with the DfT Rail Infrastructure Group.
Before Covid-19, passenger numbers on our network was strong. In fact, numbers were growing year-on-year. As such, the revenue was available to invest in the railway. Since then, revenue has fallen off a cliff, so we must address the cost. We need to effect change at a speed we have never done before. We were taking this approach before, but we were not moving fast enough.
We started by looking at major enhancement programmes and began asking ourselves some fundamental questions. What stops us from delivering projects and programmes quicker, cheaper and more effectively? How do we create those efficiencies? Where are the opportunities? What standards are blocking us from doing that? What changes do we need to make to the way we work?
We created a tagline: ‘Our ambition is to halve the time and slash the cost of delivering enhancement projects.’ That was the language we were using. SPEED, then, worked through our 11 key themes, which looked at big-ticket items in a project where we were seeing delays and cost inefficiencies.
We trialled it initially on 28 trial projects, across those 11 themes. We were able to demonstrate that, if we followed the new processes, we’d be asking for £3bn less from government to deliver the 28 projects. We’d also be delivering them cumulatively almost 600 months earlier than if we had followed the traditional process. All 28 projects will not proceed through to delivery, but we have saved billions due to the new approach. Additionally, for the first time ever, we have hit our regulated efficiency targets for four years in a row. SPEED is starting to have an impact on that too, as well as investment costs.
We opened the Dartmoor line in 2021 to be fit and safe for running hourly services on, but its condition was no better or worse than any of the other Devon and Cornwall branch lines that we’d been operating. This is a great example of where the concept of minimum viable product (MVP) comes in. The rail ambition here is that we deliver things quicker and more efficiently. In doing so, this means more commuters, being able to do more projects, and more investment. The prize is significant.
The challenge of revenue links into this. The cost of running the railway versus what’s coming in is in a deficit because people have changed their travel patterns. The more efficiently and effectively we can invest, the more likely we’ll be able to attract passengers back to the network.
Supply chain is on board with this. We’ve an amazing partnership with the Rail Industry Association, which represents a large majority of our supply chain. We’re changing our delivery models across our five regions; we’re going to an agile, thin client model, where we’ll bring in the supply chain to help us design and deliver these projects much earlier.
Bringing in these organisations earlier will help us streamline our development and delivery processes and stop duplication. We’ll see a complete change in how we develop our projects, very much in line with the Project 13 Model, which is referenced in the government’s construction playbook.
I break down SPEED into three component parts: toolset, skillset, mindset.
We’ve been focusing on changing the toolset, enabling people to act, behave and work differently. This involves making the standards we work to (mainly Network Rail standards but also the standards for which RSSB is the custodian, and BSI standards) and processes less rigid. This enables our people to make good value, engineering, risk-based decisions that are right for a project.
Skillset is the next part of the journey. We’re looking to retrain our people to do things differently, to think differently, to follow a slightly different process. That takes time. It’s not something you can translate overnight to an organisation of 40,000 people and a rail investment programme of nearly 200,000 people.
The third and most important piece is mindset. This is mainly a cultural shift, getting our people to think extremely differently to the way they did historically. In the past you’d ask someone to discuss their project, and they’d respond with: ‘2km of track, adjusting three bridges, and we’re working on three/four signals’. We’re trying to encourage them to focus on the outcome, why we’re investing in that piece of work, and the passenger benefit. If we can focus on the primary outcomes, it helps us refine the MVP to safely deliver those outcomes.
We launched our industry SPEED partnership with our supply chain in October 2022 and more recently with our train operating companies (TOCs) in June, to work closely them and understand how we align ourselves through the vision of SPEED. Any investment on the railway cannot be delivered by one organisation alone. We need track and train partners to work extremely closely on every project. We’ve got good engagement with TOCs. It’s in the early stages, but we hope in the next year or so we can mature the relationship with TOCs when working with the continued roll out of SPEED across all of our rail investment.
SPEED started as project, which included the trial, but it’s now a language that we use to describe the way we work today. We’re embedding it into how we deliver all our rail investment projects. By the start of CP7, SPEED will be built into our processes and procedures.
Great British Railways (GBR) is about bringing the industry together, back as one. Whilst there remains uncertainty about when and what GBR is going to be, that should not slow us down. There is so much the industry can do now without the ‘badge’ of GBR to get itself ready for the significant cultural mindset shift. And that’s what we’re doing really, getting ourselves GBR-ready across rail investment.
As I said earlier, we’ve been moving in this direction for some years, and have countless great examples where projects have challenged the norm and delivered outcomes quickly and efficiently. But culturally and procedurally we’ve got ourselves locked up; we created many barriers. These are the barriers that SPEED is breaking down.
Andrew Haines, our CEO, has helped Network Rail rethink itself – rethink its identity, re-evaluate its purpose. He’s got us thinking about the passenger first. It’s been an evolution over several years. We want to make this happen in all parts of the business. We’ve got the right culture and behaviours across the industry to allow this to happen. We may not have had that mindset a few years ago.
Read the first part of our interview with Christian in the August issue of Horizon.
Read
Let’s take a hypothetical platform replacement as an example.
The platform is non-compliant and deteriorating, and we need to renew it before it starts crumbling. So we’ve established that we need to replace it. There’d be different stakeholders in the room and before long the project becomes much bigger than the original requirement. It now includes new lighting, a longer platform, new CCTV, a canopy, and the relocation of the ticket machine.
The platform replacement is now an unaffordable project, so negotiations begin around what we will and won’t do. This approach sees us start from the top and work our way down. All we’re trying to do with our new approach is flip that on its head. We’re trying to get people to be crystal clear on the outcome they’re trying to achieve. What is the reason for investment? In this example, the platform is falling apart, and we need to replace it to make is safe and usable.
Yes. We start with the primary outcome: what is the minimum amount of investment we need to deliver the primary outcome safely, to a quality that is fit and safe for the use of our passengers? That isn’t to say, however, that you should only invest in the MVP solution. You can then start to bolt on options, which can be choices for funder. Some projects will just see investment for the MVP, while others will see MVP plus options one and two. We’re making choices where we’re going up the ladder of cost rather than the top down.
People often get worried that the MVP will see us cut corners, not cover sustainability, not focus on whole-life cost. But that’s not so. SPEED is about doing things quicker and more efficiently. We need the requirements right at the start. We need people in the industry to understand what we mean.
We must work industry-wide on this. We need the MVP to be industry language. Why are we investing? How do we invest the least amount of money to deliver the outcome? We may want to make a choice on the second and tertiary outcomes.
We want to work with RSSB’s members on this. It’s imperative, as a rail industry, we focus on making the industry affordable and sustainable and deliver on the needs of our passengers.
The key takeaway is: MVP is not about cutting corners or delivering poor products; it’s about efficiency and speed in delivering the outcome, and getting passengers back on the network.
As Christian says, Network Rail’s use of an MVP isn’t about cutting corners or delivering poor products, thus compromising the safety of the network. It’s about using time and money wisely to deliver a better railway for everyone, quicker.
But, every policy, investment or operational decision taken by our industry does impact safety in some way. So it’s crucial that decision makers know what to look out for when planning and implementing a change.
Use our Taking Safe Decisions Framework to make commercially sound decisions that protect rail users and workers, comply with the law and respect stakeholder interests.
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