Steve Watts

Said the following about Kai Gohegan:

“Despite having moved on from the Fleet Control Team Kai has continued to willingly support and develop further all the IT systems we have in place.

He personally spends time with new entrants to ensure they have access to everything they need and even provides some training when required. People contact him all the time to 'just change this' or 'can you make RTS do that' and generally within a few days or less it is done and actually works!

Nothing appears to be too much trouble but sometimes unrealistic expectations have to be managed with a friendly and problem solving approach. ‘Can't’ does not seem to be a word in Kai's vocabulary.“

Paul Richardson

Said the following about Kai Gohegan:

“Shortly after joining Fleet Control in the autumn of 2012 Kai Gohegan recognised that the excel systems being used to plan train maintenance were unnecessarily unwieldy and complicated. Several different systems and spreadsheets were being used but none were linked. This meant that every action had to be repeated 2 or 3 times to ensure all were kept accurate. Fleet engineering depots and operations departments rely on the output from the team and these processes often delayed and sometimes confused this information. With this in mind Kai decided off his own back to make a change.

Over the next few months he developed a concept for a web based system that would pull all the systems together in one place. For this he had to work closely with the rest of the Fleet Control and with other stakeholders, Fleet Engineering, operations and IT.

Construction of the system took a year which Kai did in his own time at home. He also had to arrange external server space to host the application. On completion he introduced it to the team. Testing and adjusting took another month with colleagues being encouraged to give the tool a thorough work out. Once all were happy and trained, which he also did, RTS Fleet Master went live in January. Since then it has become embedded in the Fleet Control processes. It has freed up time for the controllers to concentrate on the actual tasks rather than data transfer. Outputs to other stakeholders are automated and consistent. Feedback from the team has been great.

Further developments are under way including an application to assist with wheel lathe planning and recording of Fleet Control KPI’s.“

Gary Cherry

Said the following about Kai Gohegan:

“Kai joined the Fleet Control team in 2012 (within the Engineering department) and whilst working as a fleet planning manager Kai built and has further developed his Rail Tech Software (RTS) web based engineering/operations management system. Over the past few years Kai has utilised his RTS platform to develop many applications to support colleagues with new or improved systems within engineering and also across the wider GTR business.

As part of the GTR integration process a big challenge for me was to bring people, processes, planning etc together within the Train Presentation department so that we could have complete asset visibility and a standardised approach to managing all train cleaning and servicing activities effectively. Our GTR depot teams and contract partner (Churchill’s) teams (approx 700 staff in total) were all using existing but different systems and methods for planning and recording necessary work. Being aware of the excellent work Kai had already done for engineering and operations colleagues on newly introduced FleetMaster and YardMaster systems I approached Kai for similar assistance for Train Presentation. Without any hesitation, despite being in one of the most hectic jobs and departments at the time, he agreed to help.

During the past year Kai has worked closely with me, my team and our contract partner to develop and introduce CleanMaster, a bespoke asset management system for all cleaning and servicing tasks across all four of the GTR brands (Southern, Gatwick Express, Great Northern and Thameslink). CleanMaster has delivered visibility and standardisation to the department, streamlining all existing arrangements. As Kai has phased in CleanMaster by brand he has given people the opportunity to feedback (good or bad) on the system. So whilst Kai’s been working on the next phase in plan he has been making improvements to the brands already completed, which has been great for staff engagement as they have helped shape the system they are using daily.

Running parallel to CleanMaster Kai has also developed a new bespoke daily toilet availability train report in FleetMaster to help plan, prioritise and record train toilet servicing and repair work. Engineering and Train Presentation teams have access to this system and an automated email system sends a detailed fleet toilet availability report to selected recipients several times per day to provide fleet visibility and updates on both standard and accessible toilets.

Kai’s latest project is the development of a new train sanding report that again makes planning, prioritising and work recording very simple for such a very important activity. For all systems and projects mentioned Kai is also taking inputs from Genius and XV (and soon Maximo) systems for RTS to give a clear picture of the cleaning, servicing and maintenance position of all units.

Not being one to rest on his laurels Kai is continually tweaking these systems always looking to make them faster and simpler for users. At the same time he has also developed an App for phones and is currently preparing for the introduction of iPad use which will offer greater flexibility for our teams and further streamline current arrangements. RTS also enables very quick changes to a new standardised system that everyone can benefit from and has put us in a much better position to deliver our business objectives to ensure high service quality and journey experience for GTR customers.

Kai has recently moved to the Fleet Technical Services team and whilst he is still progressing CleanMaster and FleetMaster projects for my department it must be noted that the majority of the work he has completed to date was pretty much done in his own time, on top of his day job. In addition to nights and weekends he has even called or emailed me to discuss work and updates whilst he has been on leave so is his desire to deliver these projects for his colleagues. Even when you throw Kai something bizarrely challenging, a wild idea etc, he never says no; you might get an ‘unlikely’ or ‘doubtful’ response from him but not a definite no. It’s always a pleasure working with Kai as he is so positive and pro-active, keen to help everyone all the time. Finally, the quote below is from a conversation I had with Kai when I was working with him and asked about the development of RTS:

“RTS has many other applications and reports on top of it, all built with feedback from the people needing to use them. I’m really proud of something that started as a simple tool to replace some spread sheets but has evolved into a tool that makes a real difference to the daily workload of so many of my colleagues”.“