Recruitment
“Ashley was appointed as a Welding and Grinding Section Manager less than 12 months ago but he has made a phenomenal difference to his team and their performance. He immediately identified inefficient ways of working and sought to improve these and put his section at the forefront of Rail Defect removal. Since last June, Ashley has been working to secure access for rail defect removal, reducing the planning workload on the Track Departments, whilst providing better maintenance techniques and tactics for removing rail defects in the Cardiff Delivery Unit. Through his own personal learning and, the mentorship of his colleagues, Ashley and his team are thriving and setting new section records for the number of defects removed per week. Ashley has challenged the norm of planning rail defects around existing maintenance work and has taken the majority of these in-house to assure their removal in a much quicker way, often during the same week of possessions where the defects are identified, this boosts railway safety and reliability.
The result has been incredible and still only early in the new way of working, with the expected output to double in the next 12 months. From analysing data in RDMS - Rail Defect Management System - it shows that Cardiff Delivery Unit now stands at the top of the list across the UK when it comes to defects removed from track from June 2022 to May 2023, surpassing the second best performing Delivery Unit, by more than 10 per cent and other Delivery Units by multiples of their own defect removals.
The new way of working is making for a safer, more reliable railway, with the removal of rail defects in a timelier manner which will lower the risk of failure, causing speed restrictions and major incidents.
The defect removal makes the railway a much safer environment, with a focus on early intervention to increase reliability and less reactive maintenance work.
Ashley has modernised the way of working for the department, increasing efficiency, reliability and safety. He has also looked at changing equipment to make the frontline tasks easier, more cost effective and of better quality“
“We had a wonderful time on holiday , absolutely loved the whole trip particularly the Grand Canyon and San Francisco. Myself and my wife would like to thank everyone at Railstaff for the opportunity to take the Americas Golden West trip and special thank you for doing all the organising for ourselves and all the other award winners. I wish you all continued success and good luck to all the nominees for 2008.”
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