Emma Hancock

Said the following about Zoe Edmonds:

“The Network Rail Infrastructure Projects Track Team (IP Track Team) would like to nominate Zoe Edmonds for successfully leading the whole team through a significant culture change programme whilst demonstrating exceptional value for money and clearly defined benefits (including safety improvements, time saving and increased team morale).

Challenged with leading the ‘Continuous Improvement Programme’ (CIP) in September 2015, with the ultimate aim of delivering safer and more efficient Track Renewals, Zoe was keen to engage the wider workforce. By encouraging everyone to look at making small improvements, together they could add up to make a substantial total cost and delivery level difference.

Zoe got the Track Leadership Team on board from the very beginning and agreed a clear set of goals for the CIP team:

1. Empower everyone to make small scale changes to improve the efficiency, quality or safety of their day to day work.

2. Train 600 colleagues in Lean tools and techniques over eight months.

3. Provide a tool to capture and share all examples of best practice to maximise for all IP Track customers.

4. Ensure those delivering improvements and projects were appropriately recognised.

5. Lead by example by continuously improving the programme’s offering upon feedback.

Over the next 18 months, Zoe successfully led both the CIP Team and the rest of IP Track to over-deliver on all aspects of the above five goals. This was confirmed by the results of an IP Track-wide anonymous survey carried out in June 2017 where 75% of the population felt there was now a growing continuous improvement culture. A considerable success after only 18 months of the programme which was further illustrated by the 550+ improvement initiatives launched during that time, with 100 completed and financial benefits of £8.5 million realised. These ranged from back office improvements to reduce the amount of time taken in the change control process to industry-wide innovations such as the use of UAV drone technology to undertake track surveys.

The CIP Team’s aim to train 600 colleagues in Lean tools and techniques was achieved in eight months, with a further 80 colleagues subsequently trained. The ever-increasing database of improvement projects and ideas has enabled the 550+ improvement initiatives to be shared across the business and also generates automatic reports which have aided the transition into business as usual.

Always keen to set up and encourage the sharing of best practice, Zoe not only introduced department-specific workshops but also an annual CI sharing event attended and thoroughly enjoyed by Network Rail CEO, Mark Carne. She was keen to ensure the very people who delivered the great improvements personally presented them to our CEO and be recognised by senior leaders.

Leading by example, Zoe has worked to continuously improve the CIP team’s offering examples of which include streamlining the training material into a handy A5 training booklet (also resulting in a cost saving), improving the training delivery down from three days to two (returning over 100 man training days to the business) as well as simplifying reporting.

Zoe has demonstrated to Network Rail business and wider rail industry that the successful implementation of a Continuous Improvement ethos and way of working can deliver tangible cost savings with £8.5m reported in 2016/17. Put these alongside countless smaller process improvements and time-saving steps, as well as less tangible safety, environmental and quality benefits, Zoe’s success has come from really living the Network Rail behaviours. She has successfully challenged the team to improve and shown accountability for business benefits after the initial training investment. Finally Zoe has led by example to show that everyone can improve their process/project and or programme, whatever their role or position.“