Andy Milne talks to Andrew Lezala
13 Mar 2007
Andrew Lezala heads the Metronet Rail consortium put together to rebuild much of London’s clapped out underground railway. The work is taxing and has to be done during all too brief possessions. Moreover the political leaders of London offer little in the way of support and are quick to scream if the work goes wrong. The London press corps, locally based, picks up quickly on over runs and service failures.
Metronet Rail was put together by Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Bombardier, EDF Energy, and RWE Thames Water to deliver a thirty year contract which is levering private sector capital into the system. Lezala is a cheerful, enthusiastic man undaunted by jeering press and bitching politicians. He took the job two years ago.
The project proceeds apace as a flood of good news stories - conveniently ignored by the conventional media - attests. Beyond the spread sheets and set squares, Andrew Lezala brings a unique set of strengths to the job.
A career railwayman
First, Andrew Lezala is not a Londoner, he comes from Derby and can take an horizon-wide view of the capital’s transport system unfettered by affection for any one area. Being a career railwayman is a second strength.
‘On 13th September 2007 it will be 30 years since I graduated and joined BR. I say to people when I recruit them, ‘watch out, if you stay here more than two years chances are you’ll never work in another industry again.’
‘Rail is totally addictive. It touches so many people every day. It has such a great history and such great engineering. The railways changed the world and they still support the world.
Imagine this city without its metro, it’s unthinkable. And this is the definitive metro. This is where it all started and to rebuild it is a fantastic privilege. I know we’ll get flack along the way, but it’s worth it because this is such a necessary piece of work.’
Chartered Engineer
After a grammar school education, Lezala read for an engineering degree at Leicester. ‘They did an electrical, mechanical and civil engineering combined degree. I already had my eyes on the rail industry. The degree has served me well, dealing with earth structures one minute and electrics the next.’
He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. BR’s excellent graduate trainee programme has been more eloquently extolled elsewhere. Lezala progressed through the ranks and became project engineer for the Class 91 locomotives at the age of 27.
Jobs at BREL lead to work overseas in China and Australia. He was President of DaimlerChrysler’s Rail Systems in Australia. He became President of the Services Division at Bombardier Transportation. Later he was chief operating officer at Jarvis before taking the literal plunge with Metronet Rail.
Rebuilding the tube might be a privilege but why the bad press?
‘We have to remember there are 12 lines on LU and we manage 9 of them. Therefore much of the network is under our stewardship. We have a massive rebuilding programme going on - we spend around a billion a year. Much of that is people cost.
We employ a huge number of people. Every night about 500 gangs walk onto the railway, a gang can be 5 to 20 people. That’s a massive amount of intervention in a short space of time, with bespoke plans because no job is the same twice, generally.
It’s not risk free. If we did it at zero risk, we’d never get anything done. We are risk managers... let’s put it in to context. Per 10,000 gangs’ shifts - we might get 12 overruns - that’s 98.9 %. I’m not saying that’s acceptable, but it’s not bad.’
Sense of purpose
To understand Lezala’s resilience and sense of purpose take a quick look at his background. The son of a Polish immigrant and an Anglo-Irish girl he was born ten years after the conclusion of the second World War.
His father, Jozef Lezala, came from Poznan. Shortly before the war Lezala senior joined the Polish army. He was just a teenager. ‘My dad lied about his age,’ says Andrew cheerfully.
In August 1939 Germany invaded Poland. On 17th September the Soviet Union, having signed a secret pact with Hitler, invaded from the east. Although the Polish army and air force fought valiantly, the country was over run within weeks. 120,000 Polish servicemen escaped into neutral Rumania and made their way to Britain and France.
Jozef Lezala was not so lucky. Captured in the south by the Red Army, he was incarcerated in a Soviet concentration camp in Kazakhstan. Then in 1941 Hitler invaded Russia, in late June. It would prove his undoing.
Grudgingly Stalin set free the badly weakened Polish servicemen, many of whom made their way via Persia to Britain; among them was Jozef Lezala. This time he bluffed his way past handlebar-moustached RAF officers to become a pilot.
With only five hours solo flying experience Mr. Lezala bucketed out across the skies above Kent securing this country’s freedom for generations yet unborn. Poland after the war was occupied by the Soviet Union. Food was short. The country had lost a quarter of its population. Mr. Lezala never returned to live there.
Reading Polish history is a humbling experience. Never once do the Poles appear to have considered merging with their oppressors. Collaborators with the Nazis were few. Stalin himself said turning Poland communist was like trying to saddle a pig.
Poland has been sustained by a deep almost mystical sense of purpose rooted in its people and its catholic faith. It would be Pope John Paul II from Wadowice as the head of the church and Lech Walesa as the head of the Solidarity trade union who brought down communism in Europe - faith and people.
The average Pole has a unique sense of place and purpose and the assurance of ultimate victory over death. Looked at from an historical perspective the challenges of modern Britain seem rudely surmountable by comparison.
A solid family background and cultural heritage that has stood the combined onslaughts of soviet communism and the Third Reich must help explain Lezala’s relative calm. Moreover, Metronet has a policy of not bad mouthing its attackers. Certainly this is professional - any communications officer worth her salt will tell you slanging matches are at best draws.
It’s the art of the possible
‘It’s a real issue,’ Lezala allows. ‘But Peter Hendy (TfL) has a very pragmatic business view of life,’ he says approvingly. ‘His predecessor did not from what I can see. The conditioning that Kiley did and the anti-PPP mantra that went on for years, has created in the minds of a number of people a perception that it is not the right thing to do.
But actually there are very few ways to get governments to finance long term projects when the electoral period is four years. Hence little money ever came in because it always went to schools, education, police, health - they are vote winners. So hats off to those who put something together that is delivering seventeen billion quid just to the Metronet end of things.
It’s the art of the possible. This was the only show in town that could get that money and thank goodness they did it in time. The railway, due to the fantastic job the Victorians did, actually managed to survive a long period of under-investment. But now it’s tired, very tired and that makes our job even harder.
We are doing a lot. We don’t always get it right, but every time we get it wrong we learn and we make sure it doesn’t happen again. Yes, there are other forces at work that will use the media to put other pressures on us for commercial reasons.’
Lezala shrugs, mentally his opponents are back over the Oder Neisse line.
When asked who his influences are, after Churchill, his father who became a diesel generator engineer, and a retired SAS man in Sutherland, it is not long before he plumps for his team, for other engineers he’s worked with, people he sees on the job night and day. Oddly, some might say, for an engineer how people function and survive is important to him.
School of Adventure
For a number of years Andrew Lezala has taken his executive team for a week-long seminar at the John Ridgway School of Adventure in the remote north west of Scotland. Top teams from the telecoms industry, oil, and the military attend these courses run by round-the-world sailor and ex-SAS officer Ridgway.
At Ardmore delegates start the day with a run or walk around the loch and followed by a swim in its sub-artic temperatures. Strategy planning and business development sessions are offset by abseiling, mountain climbing, sea kayaking and long hikes across some of the most startling scenery in Europe.
Friendships forged during an involuntary capsize off St. Kilda or rigging a yacht in a gale force storm, leave participants stronger and more resilient than before.
‘I am interested in people and what people can do. That’s why I like Ardmore, because Ardmore to me makes you realise how much stronger you are than you think you are, in ways that you never knew. It helps you recognise your own strengths and weaknesses and as a team it really helps to strip down people to their bare mettle. When they see they can be themselves and be accepted it helps build a team rapport and mutual support and it lasts for years.’
People and their resilience is crucial to any project
‘I am a true believer that performance is all about people and a company is called a company because it’s actually a company of people. Yes, we manage assets - we have 5,200 people in this business plus another five thousand contractors to help us and its their motivation, their determination, that makes the difference.
It is my job and my executive team’s job to give them direction and leadership and help them to do what they come to work to do. I believe everybody comes to work to do a good job - I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t actually. They might moan and whinge because things aren’t right around them, but creating an environment in which people can perform well is a big part of what we’re about.’
‘Metronet man’
John Ridgway has influenced a whole generation of engineers, soldiers and entrepreneurs who walked the hills or sailed the seas with him. Phlegmatic to a fault, his philosophy that only dead fish go with the flow and given two courses of action always take the bolder option, pepper the conversation of Ardmore veterans.
Paul Emberley, PR chief, speaks highly of the course even though he broke a leg on it. Most people would have retired from the field. Not Emberley, with leg freshly plastered he got a lift back from Inverness that night and was on the water at dawn the next day.
‘Now the team saw the way Paul dealt with that and they thought, bloody hell, he’s tough. He was still in the safety boat, still canoed.’ If Metronet man - in a plaster cast - goes back to work next day, sculling across the Loch Laxford, think how that plays out professionally. Presumably this dauntless bravura is not confined to the PR department. The bolder option philosophy works in other ways too.
Take the bolder route
‘When I went to Australia (for DaimlerChrysler) I had a big job to turn the company into profit. I had a three year contract. The first six months I was working all hours restructuring and then it started getting a bit easier. Then comes the call to go and run a world wide business based in Derby.’ This was to be Bombardier Transportation.
The Lezalas were settled in Melbourne, kids in school, beautiful house. ‘The John Ridgway thinking kicked in ... do I stay or take the bolder route. My wife still hasn’t forgiven me.’
Lezala once a keen runner now keeps fit by swimming. He lives on the Isle of Dogs during the week. Anxiously I establish that he swims in an indoor pool. Weekends he heads home to Mickleover in Derbyshire.
Married 27 years he has three children - his son is working in Australia and a daughter is studying engineering at Birmingham. John Ridgway says his courses develop leadership, positive thinking and communications. Do his battle-forged theories really make a difference?
‘Leadership is about making sure that a business is equipped to be able to work in circumstances that aren’t prescribed. That is about values and behaviours and the right frameworks. People need the confidence to act and need to know they’re going to be supported.
I say to my teams for goodness sake don’t stop, keep going, learn if you made a mistake. Don’t make the same mistake twice. If we’re not making any mistakes then we’re not trying hard enough. We’ve got to be an organisation that tolerates risk.’
Can a boss really get close to his people? Do the ‘Ask Andrew’ sessions and conference calls really work?
The answer comes in an unlikely appreciation of GNER
‘I think its sad that there’s no mechanism to recognise quality of performance at the refranchising stage,’ he says. ‘As a frequent user of GNER in 2004, I thought the service level and reliability was excellent. It is a shame that they got their bidding assumptions wrong. I’m in favour of longer franchises to give people some stability and encourage more investment.’
Lezala frequently pauses and considers his next answer. ‘I’d find it difficult in three years to get into the hearts and minds of the staff, knowing that soon you might not be there. Superior performance is about people wanting to go the extra mile.
How do you get them behind that unless you get the long horizon? We’ve got a thirty years contract - so we can. When the press kicked off this time last year and people were thinking this all might go back to being London Underground we had to tell them, no, that isn’t an option.
If anything went wrong with this business it would be the banks that would come in and deal with you, not London Underground. Because we have such a long contract we can say we’re here for the long haul. That allows us to make the investment in people.’
Poland’s struggle against dictatorship lasted 40 years. Ridgway ran his School of Adventure - it’s since passed to his son in law Will Burchnall and his wife Rebecca - for 35 years. Metronet is in it for the long haul, 30 years. Lezala has put together a strong coherent organisation which no longer walks with a limp, a long term winner.