Duncan Claber

Said the following about Operational Readiness Group:

“Building on the excellent work of our events readiness team and our experience in responding to special events, our Head of Operational Readiness set up a weekly cross business Operational Readiness Group to ensure the whole of South Western Railway (SWR) is ready for any extraordinary operational issues, like events and engineering works, from a whole business perspective.

Too often, organisations take a siloed view of readiness for major events and engineering works that impact customers and colleagues. At SWR, our Operational Readiness Group takes a truly cross business and collaborative approach towards readiness. This team builds on the success of SWR’s work for Operation London Bridge, Operation Golden Orb and the company’s response to ongoing industrial action to ensure we are consistently delivering the best possible service for our customers,

To ensure the group’s work is as effective as possible, it involves those that are planning the timetable changes, right through to those that interface with our customers and plan resource requirements on stations.

The group meets on a weekly basis to consider existing and potential risks and mitigate any challenges. The group then produces a whole-business readiness tracker, offering an honest assessment of the status of SWR’s readiness, so that all of our operational managers are aware of the risks and strategies to manage them. The group also produces a visual overview of all events and engineering works on the SWR network map, making it easy for frontline managers to understand what is occurring on the network.

The group was established in February 2023 and was designed to be an ongoing, rather than one-off, project. The Operational Readiness Group has been baked into SWR’s business DNA. The group also looks after SWR’s top level assurance for signalling scheme changes and timetable readiness.

There has been excellent feedback from a variety of managers at all levels of SWR that the work of the Operational Readiness Group gives managers the information they need in order to do their best work. The content is kept deliberately simple and customer focused, so frontline managers can easily brief their teams.

We believe this initiative could be replicated across the industry by other train operating companies, to ensure operational readiness, and resilience, is achieved right across the network.“