Horizon explores: sustainability
Setting tangible sustainability targets to achieve significant improvements
RSSB member Interview
Sustainability is another example of business change for rail, says Paul Taylor, Safety and Sustainability Director at Colas Rail, with similarities to the way rail has embedded safety.
Paul Taylor Safety and Sustainability Director of Colas Rail
What’s your background?
I’m the Safety and Sustainability Director for Colas Rail in the UK, and I’ve been in this job for nearly ten years. I started off with Network Rail on the operations side. I’ve worked on the signalling operations side and the maintenance side. I was made Network Rail maintenance director in Scotland for several years, and that got me interested in safety. Unfortunately, we had a couple of accidents, and I was involved in the investigation into the Grayrigg derailment. Ultimately, that’s why I joined Colas as the Safety and Sustainability Director.
How has sustainability changed during your career in rail?
Sustainability has always been part of my job title, but the issues we’ve focused on have changed since I started. For quite a few years, ‘sustainability’ meant ‘environment’, and what that meant in practice was ‘don’t have any environmental problems’. That’s good stuff, but it always frustrated me that our sustainability efforts could’ve been more than they were.
After a while, better biodiversity crept into rail’s work on sustainability, and then the circular economy. What really galvanised me into the subject was carbon.
What did you learn when you were Group Quality, Health, Safety, and Environment Director for Colas Rail globally?
For three years I was the Group Quality, Health, Safety, and Environment (QHSE) Director for all of Colas Rail, globally, which showed me that the UK is lagging behind in some aspects of sustainability compared with some other countries. That gave me an insight into what UK rail should be doing, so when I started my current role, we took those lessons into enhancing our plans for sustainability.
So, what’s your take on sustainability in rail?
My interest—whether it’s in operations, maintenance, safety, or sustainability—is actually in business change. I like getting a business to engage in a subject properly, not just a few procedural and policy changes on bits of paper, so that they leap wholeheartedly into the subject and actually deliver some real change. That’s the basic understanding I have in my work on sustainability.
Why is it a challenge engaging people in sustainability?
A general point is that people don’t know what a tonne of carbon is, what creates it, or how that fits with the organisation’s business objectives. You need to engage people in very practical, tangible ways.
More importantly, in all our businesses, people are there trying to deliver a day job. So, with every change you want them to make, you have to help them understand how it fits with their day job.
There are some clear steps to help think about where carbon savings can be made. The first thing is your design, and then your plan. None of that costs any money. You can go for electric tools and other lovely stuff, but if your improved design and plan means that you only need half of the tools you previously used, it almost doesn’t matter what type of tools they are.
How did you get the sustainability journey in Colas Rail started?
Our parent group launched our ACT (Act & Commit Together) sustainability programme a few years ago so we had to work out how to make it more than a corporate campaign. For example, we created a message and target for carbon, which was clearly deliverable for everybody.
We started from the recognition that we have to achieve a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and continuing beyond that we will get to net zero. However, percentage reductions of carbon aren’t very meaningful to most people. Instead, we calculated our global carbon footprint, and then the 30% reduction from that. It works out at 15,000 tonnes a year globally, and 5,000 tonnes a year for the UK.
So, I set an actual reduction target of 5,000 tonnes of savings for the first year.
What did this mean for Colas Rail staff?
It got people thinking about what they were going to do, what their savings were, and whether they’d hit their targets or not. Even if a project only saved a couple of tonnes, we got excited about it and spread the word so that other people within the business came to see that they could save carbon too. We also created some competition to help a bit.
And then, because people achieved their target the first year, suddenly it becomes achievable every year. That has built momentum within Colas Rail so that everybody is thinking about it. What is it that generates carbon emissions for my part of the business? What can I do this year? How much will it cost? Can we do it for free or even save money by doing it?
What methods have you used to engage with the wider supply chain?
Within Colas Rail, we see sustainability as part of a much bigger picture where we’re working with our suppliers and clients. We’re having conversations with our clients about carbon savings we could offer them and what else they would pay for so that maybe in the future we’ll be able to help them on that journey too.
We also had a carbon day at Cranfield University with our supply chain and some clients. We had a whole day sharing carbon good practices and clear targets, and had a tour of some amazing stuff that Cranfield University is doing, especially hydrogen and alternative fuels. The feedback was that all our suppliers really appreciated the day.
Those who were quite progressive on carbon reductions appreciated the opportunity to share what they’re doing, while others who are behind the curve had a good chance to see what others are doing and what they need to do. They saw what we might be looking for next time in our big framework contracts and where they might be able to help us.
Are there any carbon reduction projects at Colas Rail that you’re particularly proud of?
We invested some of our own money into hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) fuel last year. We ran an 8-week trial with a freight train, and we’re running a couple of tampers and a heavy-lifting rail crane using HVO fuel.
What are the issues involved in using HVO?
HVO is not perfect. For example, the Environment Agency initially prohibited its use on their sites but have now softened their views following further research. This was because the HVO source originally involved palm oil, so people were destroying habitats to generate HVO. Instead, we sourced a sustainable version of HVO fuel: recycled cooking oil.
We’re determined to avoid greenwashing, so we made sure the source was truly sustainable. Then we had to persuade the operational equipment manufacturers and our own internal equipment maintainers that using HVO wasn’t going to harm their machines, as there had been scare stories about HVO clogging filters. Then I had to convince my own executive that paying the extra cost of HVO fuel compared with diesel wasn’t going to bankrupt us.
Are there any financial downsides to using HVO?
So far, we’ve persuaded all the naysayers from an equipment point of view. But financially, it’s still not sustainable for us to use this fuel all the time because the price increase is about 20–30%. We use millions of litres of fuel each year, so that’s a massive increase in costs for us.
What we’ve decided is that we will put a portion of money towards HVO so that we can continue demonstrating its value, while also encouraging others to join us. We want our suppliers and clients to start trialling this or other alternative fuels for themselves.
We’re working with RSSB’s Sustainability Team about the financial costs of HVO. We’re wondering if a large group of organisations committed to buying HVO would bring the price down, or whether the airline and shipping industries are too big as competitor buyers for this fuel. We believe that with some collaboration we could explore the possibilities to get parity on price compared to diesel.
Other people rejected the use of HVO as a traction fuel. What made Colas Rail take a different approach?
I don’t think I’ve ever come up with an original idea in my life. But I’m great at taking other people’s ideas and seeing how I can make them even better. And then I’m happy to share them with somebody else so that they can improve them further. I don’t know any other way of working.
I don’t have the patience to just be part of a working group discussion about what we’re going to do in ten years’ time. That’s a vital part of the mix, but it’s not the whole answer.
So, although we’re still having debates about the costs of HVO—as you’d expect from a profitable business that wants to stay profitable—we’re also very focused on innovation and new ideas. And we’re not afraid to take ideas other people have discarded and see if we can make them work.
We’re trying to make sure we’re doing as much as we can while remaining a profitable business.
Some people think sustainability is all about converting to renewable electricity. What’s your view?
The reality is that it’s not about waiting for the perfect final technology and that there are things we can do now. Or maybe there will be a very good technology in a few years but we’re not there yet. If that’s the case, is there something else we can do in the interim? I don’t want to be waiting 20 years for the perfect technology only to find that it’s now too late to act.
Are there other areas where you’re proud of Colas Rail’s sustainability activities?
We’re part of the wider Colas Group, which has an ‘Act and Commit Together’ programme. This has eight different areas, including carbon, inclusion, skills and development, supply chain development, and local communities.
Using these areas, we’ve created 13 different workstreams, including clients, potential clients, and local communities. We’re just getting it funded through our annual budget process, which means it will be the very first time that we’ve got all types of sustainability included in all the actions in our budget. Our CEO, Jean Pierre Bertrand, is fully committed to it, and so are most of the executives.
Are there any examples of social sustainability from Colas Rail?
We are working on all the big stuff about thousands of tonnes of carbon, but I’m just as proud of the impact we have in smaller ways or for social sustainability.
Two recent social sustainability outcomes are particularly memorable. Our Middle Metro Alliance contract for the tram extensions in the West Midlands has clear infrastructure outcomes, but we also have a social legacy. This includes sponsoring two young people through the project. They didn’t do very well at school but we’ve sponsored them through tertiary practical education, and into employment at Colas Rail.
A second example is the sustainability mural design for the backs of two low loaders, which we ran with schools in Stockport and Swindon. Each winner got an iPad and sat in the driver’s seat for a bit. But the best bit we couldn’t have predicted: one of the kids was in a car on the motorway that overtook one of the lorries with one of the designs on it, and they were so excited to see it.
The big initiatives, like the HVO fuel project, are fantastic, but the little individual stories are just as exciting. One person making a difference for one day. And because we’ve got 1,500 employees, if we can get everybody just doing a little bit for one day a year, that’s a huge difference we can make.
Are there any past lessons from the industry we can apply to embedding sustainability in rail today?
In many ways, embedding sustainability in rail has strong parallels with embedding safety in rail in the past. That was a challenge where we had to shift our mindset and do things differently, but now, many of those changes are second nature. It’s easy to forget just how far we’ve come in improving safety.
I remember a safety presentation from Network Rail that showed a 1980s work site. We looked at it aghast, seeing all the horrors of what they weren’t doing safely at the time. Then the presenter put up a picture of a worksite in the present day and said, ‘I don’t want my children looking at that in 20 years’ time, horrified at the way we are doing things today’. It’s the same with sustainability.
You’ve talked very positively about the benefits and opportunities of sustainability for rail. What’s the biggest sustainability challenge for rail?
I think the biggest challenge is to get everybody aligned. It’s not just about bolting on some KPIs. We need everyone to understand that sustainability is a business imperative, like safety.
If you have a poor safety record, you’re likely to lose work. Having been through the journey of embedding safety and seeing how long that takes, I don’t think we’ll embed sustainability in the next few months. This is a 5- to 10-year journey we’re on, not a quick sprint.
Having spent many years getting safety understood, owned, and delivered as a business requirement by both the business and operational teams, we’re now taking the same journey with sustainability. Hopefully, we can accelerate that journey because of the lessons we’ve learned through embedding safety—but even if we can’t, the journey towards sustainability in Colas Rail is now happening.
