AusRAIL, Market Sectors

AusRAIL PLUS 2011: Innovation &amp Customer Relations

AusRAIL PLUS 2011 will be the largest held to date and will this year focus on innovation and customer relations. Richard Stewart*, GM of Australia’s largest rail construction, operations and maintenance contractor, John Holland, provides his personal view on this year’s two conference themes.

As Australia’s largest rail construction, operations and maintenance contractor, John Holland is committed to being an industry leader in innovation and client service.

Despite working across a broad range of contracting roles – including train operator, network manager, asset manager, principal managing contractor, joint venture / alliance partner and sub-contractor – our business fundamentals are always the same. We seek constant improvement in our ongoing performance to ensure our quality, efficiency, cost management, people management, environmental sustainability, knowledge management and community engagement are the best in our industry. Innovation and client service are always at the forefront in each of these key areas of performance.

The primary focus across all of our operations is safety, and this is an area where we continually seek to innovate to improve our work practices.

To ensure the safety of our people, partners, clients, along with the general public, we are regularly involved in assessing our processes, procedures and training, along with making continued investment in the tools and equipment required to perform work safely.

One example is the current development of a new rail anti-collision system, which will improve track safety for personnel working in rail corridors. The system, based on aeronautical technology and used in the mining industry, can be used between track plant to improve safety by alerting people of their proximity to plant and other personnel.

Achieving an integrated design across all the engineering disciplines of a new railway is also a challenge.

Within the rail industry, several recent projects have experienced significant schedule slippage through the design process. At John Holland we have simplified the complexity of our processes to facilitate better communication with our stakeholders to ensure expectations are met.

John Holland’s systems assurance approach provides customers with the visibility and confidence that their requirements (including safety and reliability) are met at every stage throughout the asset lifecycle.

Embedding the systems assurance approach also ensures the potential benefits that innovation provides can be explored and tested against the existing customer requirements. This occurs across the whole lifecycle, from construction to the consideration of our client’s long-term operations and maintenance needs.

These systems assurance techniques are integrated into the design development process and include ongoing management of customer requirements in parallel with assuring that safety and reliability performance requirements are met.&nbsp

Resourcing is another key issue for our business. Forecasting both people and specific plant resource requirements is very challenging when we cannot be sure about which projects we will be undertaking over the longer term.

This involves making decisions based on our best assessment of future industry activity, and investing ahead of opportunities being confirmed to meet long lead time requirements for certain items. To best optimise our resources, we work closely with our clients on current and future projects to understand how to invest in resources and capabilities that will best meet their requirements.

Finally, John Holland recognises that high-quality training is paramount to our overall success as an organisation. We believe our staff should be provided with relevant training and development conducted in an environment that supports their learning goals.

Our training is regularly updated to account for developments in technology, content and approach. We actively seek opportunities to collaborate with other training providers whose ethos reflects similar goals and standards. This collaboration helps John Holland ensure best practice in our processes and training programs, and leads to the identification of opportunities for innovation.

One example is our current investment in the training and development of network controllers who will plan and control the movement of trains on the Country Regional Network (CRN).

This contract involves the operation, management, maintenance and upgrade of country railway lines across NSW, including 2700km of operational freight and passenger lines and 3100km&nbsp of non-operational lines.

Having identified network control as a skill in high demand and short supply across the rail industry, our team of rail industry experts have developed a comprehensive training program and recruited eight new trainee network controllers from a variety of backgrounds.

This training investment is a critical part of the CRN focus on safety and customer service, and our aim is to develop a culture that is deeply committed to safe and efficient operations for our CRN customers.

Like safety and investment in new technology, training and development of staff is another way in which John Holland continues to strive to be the most innovative and successful contractor in the Australian rail industry.

Given increasing demand for new and improved rail infrastructure, innovation is something that every organisation should contribute to so that collectively as an industry, we are positioned well to deliver, operate and maintain the new railways needed to support the growth of the Australian economy.

*Richard Stewart is general manager, rail Australia at John Holland.

AusRAIL PLUS will this year feature the views of Australia’s major rail leaders at the Rail Suppliers CEO Forum, to be held on Day One of the conference, Tuesday November 22, and the CEO Forum, to be held on Day Three of the conference, Thursday November 24.

Rail Express is the offical publication of AusRAIL PLUS, and will feature exclusive Q&ampAs with all of Australia’s rail leaders participating in the conference’s CEO Forums.

AusRAIL PLUS 2011 will be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from November 22nd-24th.

To register visit: www.ausrail.com
Phone: +61 2 9080 4307
Email: info@informa.com.au

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