Colin Ord

Said the following about East Coast Upgrade Customer Experience Team:

“I would like to nominate the East Coast Upgrade Integrated Passenger Handling Team, encompassing GTR, Network Rail, LNER and Stagecoach and GoAhead Rail Replacement (from GTR: Benji Deane, Stuart Broom, Nina McGovern, Chris Penn, Ryan Temple From LNER, Ricky Barsby, Kate Smith, Joanne Leech, Malcolm Knight, From Network Rail, Justin Swain, Laura Smyth and Tim Walden, from GoAhead London Tom Parkin and from Stagecoach Rail Replacement Neil Wright) for the successful delivery of 4 full closures of Kings Cross Station over the last 10 months.

The task was mammoth and started in the planning several years out, upgrading the East Coast Mainline was always going to be a daunting task and the first phases of that involved getting buy in and alignment from all train operating companies to work together to plan passenger movements around a closed Kings Cross. With operations affecting GTR, LNER, Hull Trains, Grand Central, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Avanti West Coast, Northern Rail, Greater Anglia and Transpennine Express, this was never going to be easy.

The first closure would involve the busy August bank holiday, with many events taking place nationally, this needed a fresh approach to planning and an industry level plan.

The joint Customer Experience Team always put the customer at the heart of what they were planning, ensuring that journeys could be enabled by other modes in the most effective way possible.

The team went through the normal stages of development, there was a lot of storming as always when you put different train operators in the room with different priorities, a little bit of norming as they got used to working with each other, finding common priorities and aligning their vision for ensuring that no matter if the customer was going from Harringay to Moorgate or Inverness to Peterborough that they had a great experience and a seamless journey, then the team build on this and are now very high performing, with joint operations, a high degree of trust and have set the bar for the management of these types of events.

With over 41000 passenger journeys made on an average summer weekend on the East Coast Mainline, the team had to work hard to secure buy in from other train operating companies to support the operation with the following innovations

• The sub-hire of HST stock to CrossCountry to enable more capacity out of Edinburgh Waverly.

• The creation of a cross industry Extranet site for the sharing of Operating Plans and Contingency Arrangements.

• Relief trans sourced to allow extra capacity on the corridor between York and Chesterfield

• Hot Spare trains diagrammed and crewed ready to roll

• Cross TOC Working arrangements for station operations

• The creation of an industry “Passenger Handling Manager” to look after customers throughout the expanded network and draw in real time comms via a WhatsApp group across all industry parties.

In order to guide customers and ensure a consistent experience the team delivered the following

• Fully aligned training and briefing for all staff.

• A Staff Handbook detailing what was happening

• Temporary facilities with lighting, air-conditioning, all with high levels of accessibility.

• Entertainers on hand at Peterborough and out at Stevenage and Hitchin

• Customer Giveaways with “Rail Replacement Survival Packs” with items such as hand wipes, water, power chargers and biscuits.

The first August Bank Holiday blockade was very successful, and delivered the transition of signalling control from Kings Cross PSB into York ROC as well as overhead line upgrades for Stevenage Platform 5 as well as renewing the unique Newark flat crossing in Lincolnshire.

In of itself this was a major achievement, the East Coast Mainline hadn’t been closed in this way for over a decade and the team pulled it off with lots of positive praise and feedback, however this is only half of the story.

As part of the wider East Coast Upgrade Programme the team took this further with much more work to do, there was further closures of Kings Cross planned for early 2020 and into the Summer. The teams success was building on those key items that they initially created and turned them into business as usual processes.

The last two closure weekends have seen the customer being able to stay on trains for longer by a joint initiative to operate LNER trains to St Neots for a short coach shuttle to Bedford for customers to access frequent GTR Thameslink services into central London instead of spending over an hour and a half on a coach from Peterborough.

Contractual arrangements and the colour on the side of the train are all left at the door as the team build the plans around looking after the customer holistically, and even with the more recent blockade in June, which was further complicated by having to ensure social distancing and hand sanitising were overlaid on top of the plan, customers were still able to travel with ease.

The last blockade, despite being one of the most challenging in theory now felt very easy with the strong relationships, trust and maturity that developed within the team embedded into their every day work practises. The planning process was clearly established with a strong Plan, Do, Review, Learn culture within of everyone in the team.“