Fiona Foulkes

Said the following about The System Operator Timetable Production Team:

“The System Operator Timetable Production team manages the coordination and validation of timetables from over 30 train and freight operating companies to produce and publish a single timetable for the national rail network. The timetable planning system requires a huge level of attention to detail, technical knowledge and manual data manipulation, making our planners much deserving of recognition of their hard work over the past 18months or so (in particular).

The judges will be well aware of the issues faced by the industry during the May 2018 timetable change disruption – to put it into context, the sheer amount of individual timetable changes were significantly higher than previously seen, with around 50-55% of all services being altered. The timetable production team have worked solidly to deliver for our customers and continue to do so, dealing with compressed timescales, media scrutiny and being asked to re-do detailed work. Stephen Glaister, ORR, recognised the position this team had been put into within part 1 of the ORR inquiry recently: “I would like to acknowledge that, through no fault of their own, a number of railway employees were placed in circumstances that asked a very great deal of them: this includes…those being asked to write and endlessly re-write railway timetables to unreasonable deadlines.” The report later states “the huge commitment and exceptional efforts of those teams has been apparent. They were placed under enormous pressure to re-write the timetable at short notice, to a scale and schedule that is unprecedented. The Inquiry has found consensus among the Industry that these teams were coping with an extremely challenging task following the decisions that were made…The teams involved made extraordinary efforts to complete the work then required, without any reasonable options to reduce or mitigate the scale of the task at that late stage.”

The teams’ concern for customers is outstanding as demonstrated by their willingness to work flexibly in the months leading up to May 2018, including over-night and weekends as required, going above and beyond in their dedication to delivering and continuing to deliver for our customers. They have overcome significant challenge and continue to focus on making improvements for the customer – including rewriting parts of the December timetable; recovering T-12 Informed Traveller; and continuously improving the training for new timetable planners despite the pressures the team are already under. Alongside this, the team have been generous with their time for senior visitors to understand more about what they do – their knowledge and pride in their work is evident, and the atmosphere in the office is welcoming and calm, despite the industry pressures they are working under.“