Sam Newman

Said the following about Operational Delivery:

“Context

Northern is the largest train operator outside London, and the second largest in the UK, playing a vital role in the north of England by connecting tens of thousands of people to work, leisure, education and more every day.

In the West and Central region alone, Northern operate 8 types of traction across 37 lines of route. This is crewed by 895 Drivers and 714 Conductors, with an additional 175 traincrew that are in training and not yet qualified. This is spread across 9 traincrew depots; 2 of which have split terms and conditions, owing to legacy agreements.

Since transfer into public ownership on 1 March 2020, Northern has focussed on restoring a full and reliable train service, increasing capacity and delivering the many enhancements that passengers deserve.

Northern operates one of the most complicated networks in the country and despite the challenges of the pandemic, our approach has remained to deliver through operational performance. One of the key aspects of this has been ‘link efficiency’.

Headline achievements

• Reduced outstanding training by 2,132 traction days and 1,051 route learning days since January 2021. This was set against the backdrop of Covid restrictions on training and 34 Drivers leaving the business, which generated more training days (approx. 2,000) as a result.

• We have been working to embed link efficiency – a Northern metric, which demonstrates the percentage of work that a Driver can sign in their link, through the combination of route and traction training, resulting in a more accurate representation of Driver deployment capability compared to the industry’s ‘productivity’.

• Improved link efficiency at Manchester Piccadilly depot by 14%, Liverpool depot by 15%, Wigan depot by 10% and Manchester Victoria depot by 5% since January 21, which has reduced our reliance on rest day working (RDW), owing to insufficient route knowledge.

• We have used the link efficiency process to allow us to train new Drivers to make them most effective, devising link by link post qualifying assessment (PQA) route learning plans that revolve around the 2-year PQA assessment cycle.

Link efficiency

Our link efficiency calculation is the combination of a Driver’s route and traction card competence measured against the percentage of diagrams that appear in that Driver’s link that they can operate.

Certain route/traction combinations will not give the Driver much of an uplift, owing to how the routes are distributed amongst the diagrams, which gives us better insight as to how to train effectively and in what order.

By using this data, we can influence what route pairings are on a traincrew diagram (and the number of return instances on that trip), which will make our diagrams more efficient from the viewpoint of how many Drivers can sign the work.

How does link efficiency differ from ‘productivity’? Productivity is often misleading and inaccurate in demonstrating the effectiveness of a Driver’s deployment. Productivity will only give a percentage of total route/traction completed, without it being overlaid onto how that translates to diagram cover.

A Driver can be 70% productive, but not link efficient if they do not sign key routes or traction that appear on the majority of diagrams. As a result, it can be misleading when interpreting how many ‘productive’ Drivers we have at a depot.

For example (please refer to appendix item supplied via email), Driver Redfern is more productive, as they have signed off more lines of route and traction, however, they are not as effective in resource deployment as Driver Smith.

This is caused because of the routes that Driver Redfern doesn’t sign – Southport (from Wigan) and Blackburn via Todmorden. There are more diagrams of these route types in the link; as such by not signing them, he is less effective to covering the train plan.

Using this knowledge, we can build more effective training needs analysis (TNA) route learning plans.

Some notable changes in link efficiency around the May timetable change have now driven us to work with Service Planning colleagues to ensure that diagrams, where possible, do not contain many different lines of route.

Link efficiency will be subject to drops when established Drivers leave post and are replaced by PQA Drivers – though by using link efficiency to inform PQA learning, this drop becomes less pronounced.

Some further work is still required to finesse the process, such as smarter link building and spare coverage, which we are working through at present.

Using this methodology, we can target our trainee Drivers and present a comprehensive route learning programme before they complete their full competency assessment (FCA).

These plans revolve around the assessment cycle and mapped against a Driver’s yearly commitments (such as annual leave, consolidation etc.), which can give the Driver Training Manager (DTM) full confidence in when to put a trainee Driver onto their next route – mapped against all their training needs.

These plans also allow for established Drivers to route learn on routes that aren’t presently well supported – as these usually would involve complex centres, which are saved for a PQA Driver’s second year plan, ensuring that the programme is safe and built pragmatically.

Similarly, we can now be certain as to how each of our route learning activity will impact a Driver’s effectiveness against the number of days it will take to learn a route.

This allows us to make great strides in prioritising the routes that give us the greatest improvement versus the least time expended to achieve it.

This gives us a more scientific approach to how we allocate our road learning plan week on week.

Following introduction within West and Central regions, this has been shared with all Northern’s Operational teams, who have now adopted this approach. The link efficiency at each depot across all 4 operating regions is reviewed on a periodic basis and is a consistent improvement measure for the business.

Please refer to the attachment sent via email from [email protected] for photos, appendix items and supporting information.“