Recruitment
“I'm delighted to nominate the team in this category.
A major landslip occurred at Harbury Cutting in January 2015, immediately closing the Chiltern line between London Marylebone and Birmingham.
Over 350,000 Tonnes of material had slipped towards the line. Impact on TOC's and passengers was severe with the likelihood of the line being closed for several months. FOC's were heavily impacted with, amongst others, the line being used by Jaguar Land Rover for movements of their vehicles.
Within hours of the slip an emergency IP response team, led by Nathan Campsall, was being pulled together, working closely with our earthworks contractor, Murphys, and the RAM's. Whilst the slip area was being fenced off and settling Nathan took photos of the slip in one of the deepest railway cuttings in the UK and sent them to the NR media team so an early press release could inform passengers of the disruption, and most importantly, the scale of the challenge.
Calls were made to Chiltern Railways and Cross Country to give them appropriate perspective and sight of immediate actions.
Causal factors were agreed by working with specialists across NR and the supply chain and a recovery plan, based on removing the majority of the 350,000tonnes from site, was initiated to enable earliest safe re-opening of the railway. Narinder Gill and John Glynn led our engineering team, working closely with RAMs and multiple designers, in optimising an accelerated design and it's approvals to meet strenuous re-opening criteria.
Dave Rogers led on site project management, with Gavin Evans as SPM. They ensured works were always delivered safely around the clock, no mean feat as there were up to 1000 wagon movements per day and robust fatigue management was essential, as well as ensuring an appropriate level of process to assist in the insurance recovery and with a constant flow of information to our stakeholders - including inhabitants of Harbury who had a 24/7 muckshift site opposite them.
Ultimately, the line re-opened 3 weeks ahead of schedule, with very positive media coverage throughout and feedback from TOC's that the Harbury recovery was industry best practice in both communications and working together in an emergency situation. It was a really great team effort.“
“I thought the evening was extremely well organised and the atmosphere was even better than last year, and a far cry from some other awards events held elsewhere. The meal itself was also excellent.”
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