Rail - It's a people business

Labour supply agencies are working together - there’s something not quite right about that statement. But under Network Rail’s new structure for contingent labour, that’s exactly what’s happening.

For the past couple of months, Network Rail has gone from 57 contingent labour suppliers to just
four core companies and 16 specialist agencies - four in each region. The logic is that it will improve safety, create more opportunities for the workforce to develop and that by committing to just a handful of companies, the supply chain is given more financial security. They know where the next order is coming from.

Given the challenges Network Rail will face getting back to timetable in CP5, anything that can help develop the workforce, and quickly, is a good thing.

RailStaff spoke with Paul Crompton, managing director of one of the core suppliers - Ganymede, about how he thinks the shake-up of contingent labour will benefit his business and the industry at large.

Creating a workforce

Ganymede, a subsidiary of RTC Group specialising in the supply of blue collar workers, won the contract for the Western and Wessex regions, Wales and the LNE North. This equates to, on average, around 300 to 400 people being deployed onto Network Rail infrastructure every day. To meet this demand Ganymede is having to expand - the recruiter is having to recruit for itself. The company has already opened new offices in Doncaster and Portsmouth.

Says Paul, ‘Because we’re a core supplier in these regions, we can then know that all the work that the delivery units (DU) are doing in each of regions will be offered to us, so we are now aiming to work with the DUs to try and look, rather than one or two weeks, try and look 12 weeks in front, a year in front, and just see what work is coming.’

Having guaranteed business allows the four core suppliers, Ganymede included, to invest in its training offering, something that is also part of the code of conduct that all of the suppliers have had to sign up to.

As part of its tender, Ganymede included proposals to establish an apprenticeship programme. It hopes
to create around 36 apprenticeships a year with help from one of its training partners, Arc Academy. It will allow suppliers to address specific regional skills shortages that exist on their patch.

This is the case in Plymouth, where Ganymede plans to launch an apprenticeship scheme in the next month or so. ‘There aren’t a hundred people in the area who are skilled railway workers for us to recruit, so we need to invest in training and developing some,’ said Paul.

For those already working in the industry, the new structure should create more opportunities to develop; it will treat people as people not as tools. It will de-commoditise the labour supply process, Network Rail has said. For the agencies, it should mean that workers are more loyal. It’s a commitment that needs to be made from all sides to work.

Says Paul, ‘We’re at early days with that at the moment. We’ve done it in the past but we’ve never really formalised it. Now we’ve put down a structure of how we’re going to do it.

‘That’s the aim. To show them that, if you want to progress, you’re not going to be stuck on a shovel for five years, 10 years.’

He added, ‘We can offer them consistency of work, a career plan with training, along with transportation to work in brand new vehicles, so I think the investment we can put into it is a lot better for them. They’re not ringing round five different agencies trying to find shifts.’

Paul himself has been on the other side of things, having worked in engineering and management roles on the Heathrow Express project,

London Underground track renewals programme and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Safety critical

Within each region, there is also a secondary core supplier. This requires the core suppliers to communicate with each other in a way that hasn’t happened before, taking away, to an extent, the competitive edge that has existed in the past.

Network Rail Operations is the testbed for this new structure. If it seems to be working, it will likely be applied to Infrastructure Projects.

Part of the code of conduct that each of the suppliers has signed up to includes adopting Network Rail’s Lifesaving Rules; Safety is always the main priority. The use of agency staff in safety critical roles hasn’t always enjoyed a great reputation in the past. It is one of the reasons for the creation of the new Safe Work Leader role. On paper, better training and a localised workforce that knows the route should go some way to addressing this.

Ganymede is confronting one of the biggest safety risks for the industry, driving, by investing in a brand new fleet of 150 vehicles which include speed restrictors and fatigue monitoring technology.

Around the same time the framework contracts were published, Network Rail announced that Sentinel was to replace London Underground’s LUCAS, addressing another significant safety challenge.

‘It is a big change, but it’s a good change,’ said Paul, as it will allow agencies like Ganymede to manage their workforce better, particularly around working hours and fatigue.

Addressing the reforms as a whole, Paul added, ’I think it will change and the four of us are committed to Network Rail, and we’ve put in quite a lot of initiatives to try and engage with the workforce more.’