Jon Morgan

Said the following about Resources & Rostering:

“Great Western Railway (GWR) is one of the biggest rail franchises in the UK, part of the First Group of companies, operating the Western network since 1996, rebranding ourselves as GWR in 2015. We employ over 6000 people across our network and we carry more than one and a half million customers over two million single journeys on 10,000 services every week. People are at the heart of our business and our ethos is that we are 'greater together'.

Martin Resources and Rostering Team has performed outstandingly to deliver spectacular improvements in resourcing GWR services, especially at weekends. The last year or so has been a challenging time for GWR with traincrew resources stretched due to traction training and various infrastructure briefings. This has led to a high number of uncovered turns especially through the summer of 2018 and at weekends. Martin has inspired, galvanised and focused the team to work long hours and achieve excellent results which steadily reduced the number of uncovered turns and hence cancelled trains. It has been a monumental effort by the team who regularly worked late into the evenings, overnight and at weekends to prep each days turns. Martin worked shoulder to shoulder with this team at all hours. They also faced a number of late notice possessions which caused significant changes to diagrams and turns meaning significant additional work.

I believe that without the over and above hours they put in and their commitment to their role and our colleagues and customers alike – We (GWR) would have seen a lot more cancellations due to uncovered services. As well as updating crew managers on the daily performance conference call, Martin has also set up a regular Friday conference call to keep our guards managers up to date with the outlook for weekend coverage, giving time and opportunities to look for further options to cover services. The crew resource managers have built close working relationships with managers at a local level to explore various ‘outside the box’ coverage options, when there were no further alternatives left. The close working relationships they have cemented with local crew managers and many of the train crew have certainly put GWR in a better place for ensuring train service coverage. This was demonstrated over the Summer with the co-active work between the crew resource managers and local crew managers working closely together to cover our services during the keys dates of the World Cup finals. This was done by constant phone dialogue, sharing the wider picture knowledge of the resources team with the localised knowledge of the crew managers.

The team all deserve huge recognition for what they have delivered for GWR and our customers, serving as a great example of rail industry dedication. Many services would not have run but for their attention to detail, persistence, phone calls, knowledge, experience and ability to build and sustain relationships with traincrew.

A specific example of where this team delivered was for the return of Board Masters out of Newquay on Monday 13th August 2018. The previous Sunday had yet again proved a challenge which had slowly been overcome. However, HSTs were in the wrong place and we needed 7 HSTs to work out of Newquay on the Monday starting with empty stock moves from Laira and St Philips Marsh early on Monday. Martin and his team delivered all 7 HSTs to ensure that the tired festival goers all caught a train home with the minimum of queueing and fuss. This team have been the backbone of the delivery of GWR services during a difficult 2018 and without them we would not have achieved the service and performance that we managed to deliver.

The resources team role is very pressured and sometimes thankless task due to the reactionary nature of the role. It is hugely difficult for them to priorities their work to ensure all calls are answered and all issues are responded to - which can lead to exasperated train crew. However, the hours they put in and their commitment to wanting to deliver a fully covered train service deserves recognition. If our services were not covered then then this can affect the safety of our customer and colleagues alike to due to cancellations and disruption plus huge reputational damage to GWR. Their good work covers many of the GWR values – dedicated to safety, committed to our customers, supportive of each other and above all accountable for performance.

It is also worth noting that the crew resource managers constantly extend an open invite to our local crew managers and crew alike to visit them in Swindon. This helps both teams put the names to faces but also helps both parties understand the challenges of their roles and harnesses closer working relationships. Martin has previously taken the time to visit the West region for a Q&A session with train crew, fielding all manner of challenging questions, giving them clarity on processes, offering rationale as to why certain decisions are made and taking away their feedback – this went a long way in building a bridge between West crews and their resources colleagues that they see as so far removed from them in Swindon.

We feel it would be fitting for them to receive some wider industry recognition of their hard work and dedication.“