Jason Parker

Said the following about Paul Webber:

“Paul has worked on the railway for over 32 years in various posts but many of those years have been in service planning. Paul leads and manages the Special Traffic Manager's Team covering our East and Northeast Regions, he Manages a Team of 4 planners for Northern Railway. To his credit Paul has recruited his team from inside and outside the industry, some with many years services in other railway discipline and other's from our Apprentice program and entry level starters. Paul manages them all equally, providing each of them individually with the support , training and coaching they need so they achieve their own goals. In the last 12 months Paul has had 4 new planners that all need varying degrees of training, 3 of those were new this year but with Paul's guidance all are adding value to improve our customers experience.

The team are responsible to overlay the long term plan week in/week out, due in part to our huge geographical area, within our Northern network there is a new plan needed every week. The affects of the plan can range from 'dozens' to well over 'a thousand' schedules in that week, all need planning and delivering.

Paul leads his Team by example with a 'hands on' attitude to meet the industry deadlines and Network rail timescales. The team have had to cope with numerous challenges since, during and post-COVID (as the whole industry has) but they have always delivered a plan for our customers and stakeholders, meeting the industry deadlines. This often means Paul working in to the night, early morning and weekends, just to ensure the business has a Service plan that is deliverable for our Operations Teams and meets our customers expectations. That might not seem unusual, I know many colleagues work tirelessly for our customers (I'm certain all the other nominees do too). However, Paul works over and above what is expected of him but especially so, when we have 'significant challenges' with (usually) very limited time to work through them, such as late notice engineering work, infrastructure challenges and not least the long standing issues of industrial action by our various trade unions. He ensures there are service plans in all such incidences, with recent examples being the ASLEF and RMT long standing strike action and on the odd occasions, if they are cancelled at very short notice, that too has enormous planning challenges. Added to that the 'everyday' infrastructure challenges that enforce a speedy re-write of the service plan with specific recent examples such as the Petteril Bridge derailing and the damage to Plessey viaduct. Paul does whatever is needed to ensure our part of the industry delivers what our customers expect: safe, reliable travel from A to B .

Paul has worked for our railway for 32 years, his sole aim is to 'do the right thing' for his Team but more importantly for our customers. This would be a long-overdue reward and recognition of an unsung Rail Manager that goes about their business for the betterment of everyone around them but with customers at the heart of his work ethic.“