David Franks, managing director, National Express Group Trains Divison, talks to Andy Milne
16 Jul 2007
2007 is proving a tough time for the National Express Group. Shorn of Central Trains, Midland Mainline and Gatwick Express, the company will soon be reduced to just two railway franchises, c2c and the ominously named ‘one.’ It is bidding strongly for the East Coast Main Line, but failed to take Cross Country.
NEG learnt lessons on over bidding early in the game. The sequestered franchises have performed very well, which is doubly galling for NEG. Of all Britain’s railway operators, it seems, NEG knows best how to run trains on time.
The good news for staff at all these train operating companies is that the new owners know that and can be expected to take full advantage of the talent on tap developed by David Franks and his rail teams up and down the country.
Franks cuts a slim, fit, figure at 50, tanned and relaxed. He operates from offices in Grosvenor Gardens behind the Marshall Foch memorial outside Victoria station. This is where veteran Foreign Legionnaires gather every year in April to remember their war dead and toast a fabled corps that still takes people from any where - no questions asked - and makes of them the finest soldiers in the world.
The ability to spot talent
David Franks has unwittingly espoused a similar philosophy. ‘We have the ability to spot talent and nurture that talent and allow people the freedom to work within their own business and grow.’ Staff who might have started in a ticket office can end up managing directors of train companies.
Steve Banaghan, managing director of Central Trains worked on the platforms at Gatwick Express. ‘When I first knew Steve he was operations manager at ScotRail. We looked around for someone who could be a managing director (at Central Trains) and there were one or two people who I thought probably had the makings but were un-tested. So we put him in as a deputy md at Central under Nick Brown.’
Central to the Franks philosophy is the promotion of talent on merit and encouragement of staff. He started as a junior railman, aged 16, at Salisbury station. “I always wanted to be in the rail industry. I was very lucky. The station master at Salisbury, the ‘legendary Owen Faisey,’ was very keen to develop people. He encouraged me to go to college and study.”
Faisey was quite a disciplinarian and had very high standards but he encouraged many people who went on to build successful careers on the railway.
“I spent a few years at Salisbury.” Franks worked in the ticket office, parcels, rostering and even did a spell train announcing. ‘I really did get a good grounding in all aspects of the railways which is something I try to encourage our new era of graduate trainees to do now.’
Then to get promoted - those days CO1 was where you stayed - I went to London. I worked round the London Travel Centres for 18 months or so then went back to Salisbury as CO2. My early break came when I took the Rules and Regulations classes. I was student of the year - and suddenly got noticed because I’d got very good results.
Whether they were deserved or not, I don’t know. I had to put some of them into practice and I hadn’t really understood them. I could read them and answer the questions but the practical interpretation was different. Anyway, within weeks I’d been offered promotion to assistant station manager at Richmond, aged 19, then station manager at Barnes, Supervisory Grade D. After a spell in line traffic management Franks became a youth training scheme administrator.
We brought in a lot of young people, and basically taught them the basics of railway operations. Further jobs at Brighton, Paddington, Old Oak Common, Colchester, and Southend culminated in a three year stint as Area Operations Manager at Gloucester. He was then promoted to a divisional directorship at Network South East. His career received a check at privatisation.
Challenging
‘I was in the management bid team LT&S which fell apart at the last minute because one of our team had been involved in a ticketing fraud. In the end all the team were moved and I was left trying to hold together a team that was in real difficulty. Then I decided to move on. The new owners were Prism. So I got a job as divisional operations manager for Thames Trains.
Again there was a joint bid management with Go Ahead and I stayed there 18 months and then was promoted to managing director of First North Western. From there I became managing director of Southern. Then I moved to National Express Group initially as divisional director north looking after ScotRail, Central Trains, MML and Maintrain. From there I got the job I have now.
There’s a lot of grass roots stuff which I was lucky enough to get a good grounding in. I was able to move up through operations mainly as a result of the lucky break in the early part of my career, through to senior operations roles and then an md’s job.
David Franks has achieved a great deal in his job as Trains Division managing director at NEG. The six train companies in his charge rank among the best in the country. Two, Silverlink and Central Trains, operate under some of the most challenging conditions anywhere on the network.
‘One of our real strengths is an ability to make the trains run on time.’ How is this achieved?
Each of our train operating companies has a managing director and a team responsible for running that business. My job is to make sure that the (same) systems, processes and quality standards apply in each of the businesses. And where we have good practice operating in one that is replicated in another.
We avoid the concept of ‘it wasn’t invented here.’ We asked, ‘how are you managing performance’ in every business and we took the very best of each of the aspects of performance management and wrote down a performance managing system. This included managing our own activity, train crew, fleet, station staff; all activity under our direct control.
Then we looked at things that weren’t in our control like Network Rail and other train operators and we put plans in place to manage that activity as well. We put escalation plans in place such that if it wasn’t working we knew what to do at any given time.
So it may ultimately escalate to me having to go and talk to Iain Coucher, say, to fix things. That process is in place and replicated in every one of our businesses. Everybody is audited on that process. My job is to set the standard and encourage its use across the business and that’s what drives standards up.’
Great conundrum
Franks will not be drawn on how NEG is handling the bidding process. ‘The great conundrum for the next generation of rail chiefs in Whitehall is how to bring back quality service provision instead of simply chasing the highest bid. Talking to people at the top of their game will certainly inform the future development of the railway.’
On the face of it Franks has had a plain sailing career, notwithstanding the LTS ‘misery bid’ and NEG’s current challenges. However, his wife died in 2002. How did he cope? ‘It’s incredibly difficult, emotional turmoil like that.’ He says he was helped by other people sharing their experience of bereavement. ‘Life is life and you have to get on with it. I’m lucky in that I work in an industry which is a family and people are there and support you. I had huge support at the time. But I’ve also got a really tough job to do... you can work harder, yes, that does and can help.’
David Franks enjoys home life. He has since remarried, and goes fishing
‘Relax? Don’t assume I relax when I go fishing! I only go fishing when it’s a competition. I go coarse fishing linked to Railsport.’ He’s been fishing since he was 14 and has just returned from an international competition in Luxembourg as part of Railsport - on the Moselle river. ‘We were the away team... but we still won.’ Railsport GB also won the first USIC Golf Championship at Clervaux in Luxembourg holding off the challenge of 13 other countries over two days of competition.
He has always been a great supporter of Railsport and was first approached to help by Paul Watkinson, head of HR at the British Railways Board at privatisation.
Why so keen on Railsport?
‘It’s great to be competitive. It gives people an edge. You want them to be winners. It is also a fantastic opportunity to make friends and be part of the railways family. What’s lovely for me is that I bump into huge numbers of people that don’t know me as a manager in NEG but they know me because of Railsport.’ Being part of the railway community is important to Franks. He’s determined but unassuming, not so much a suit as a track suit.
Has the corporate spirit of the railway survived?
‘Despite the fact I have worked for BR, Go-Ahead, FirstGroup and NEG I still feel I am a railway person. I’ve been in the railway industry for 35 years. I like to think people don’t see me as old school railway.
I have grown up as the industry has changed and I’ve had to learn things I’d never been involved in before. My understanding of a business and the responsibility that goes with that are so different; I’ve learnt a huge amount.’
Capacity is an issue for every railwayman and woman and he is well aware of the impact this has on front line staff
‘In 1994 the industry had seen continual decline. Since privatisation it has reversed that and numbers have grown exponentially.’ Franks ticks off the reasons for this; better marketing, revenue protection and most important of all the powerhouse economy of the south east.
‘There is no sign of that growth stopping. It’s going to continue. My own view is we have done remarkably well to accommodate this in terms of limited investment in new track and signalling on the current network.
Longer trains are a good answer in certain parts of the network. But you’re not going to put longer trains, say, on the Southern. We are going to have to do something more radical than just tweak what’s already there. There’s going to have to be something else; some serious investment. So we wait in eager anticipation for the government’s High Level Output Statement.’
Does he ever feel frustrated as an operator at not being in charge of the infrastructure? How does he feel when a set of points fails yet again and his trains are grounded?
David Franks considers this for a second then leans forward. ‘I tell you this much, if there’s a set of points that need winding I could do it; that’s one thing.’ Then he goes on to say there are two ways of looking at the structure of the railway. The first is the head-in-the-sand approach.
‘The way it was is the way it should be or you can think out of the box a little bit. The biggest problem railway managers have to cope with is changing management style from managing with a command and control structure that leads you towards vertical integration or managing through a contractual relationship. That has been the biggest problem most BR managers have had. It’s a bit of a dilemma because you need both sides of the table to recognise that it’s a contractual relationship.’
At NEG, Franks and his teams have built a process that manages the relationship between their companies and Network Rail. This involves knowing when to use the Regulator and when to escalate and when to be flexible.
“I don’t think people have moved quickly enough from a command-and-control structure to managing through a contractual relationship. If you know you are right, you work in a way that says, ‘I’m sorry but you can’t say that.’ You can shift from command and control structure then vertical integration disappears as an issue.”
He points out that after a rail accident like Grayrigg the train company gets on with running services whilst the infrastructure provider sifts through what happened.
A very good manager
He is supportive of Network Rail and describes Iain Coucher as a very, very good manager. ‘He’s tough and probably brutal and you hear lots of stories, but he probably needed to be, to move that tanker around. He’s very data rational. So if you present arguments to him with the facts of the case then once he’s understood you’ve researched it and know the answer he’ll take on board what you’ve said to him. I’ve found him to be a good guy, someone you can do business with.’
What a shame the same intellectual rigour is not espoused by the current regime at Marsham Street. As usual, after the franchise announcements, David Franks is thinking first of those people under his care.
In a letter to all staff he acknowledged his disappointment and said, ‘I know the coming months will be an unsettling time for many of you in our train companies. I would like to thank you for your commitment and efforts and assure you that we will make the handovers to the new operators as seamless as possible.’
Where there’s change, there’s opportunity
His belief in rail and its future remains undaunted. ‘It’s a fantastic industry to be in. You’ve got to be able to work with people. It’s changing. You can be fearful of change. I always find where there’s change there’s opportunity and this industry has bags of opportunity and we’re growing. What more would you want? Enjoy it! That’s my advice.’
Outside in Grosvenor Gardens Marshall Fosch fixes his eternal gaze on the crowds queuing to access Victoria Underground station. The soldiers who gather there every April represent men from an ancient force which, legend has it, was once reduced to single figures. Yet it returned to restore the honour of France.
Let us hope Franks and his rail rangers enjoy a similar resurgence in their fortunes.