Team: JFRail – Jon Fenn: Workstream Lead, Mark Bird: Systems and Ergonomics Design SME, Bryan Keetch: Operations SME, Hannah Cox: Production and Design Lead, Teodora Stefanova: Human Factors Engineer
The Elizabeth Line bid was awarded to GTS in October 2024, with the changeover taking place to the new concession from late May 2025. As part of the bid, a number of critical initiatives were developed to support achieving the aims of the new concession and delivering significant benefits for Elizabeth Line Customers. A proposed initiative, which was baked into the GTS operating model, was the redevelopment and reorganisation of the Elizabeth Line Operators desks in the Romford Control Centre (RCC) Control Room to improve communications and deliver performance benefits through optimising the approach to incident management and managing the train service in disruption. JFRail was selected to complete this work on behalf of GTS.
The scope of work that JFRail completed from October to December 2025 included the following:
The work focused on using the Human Factors assessment to drive the objective principles required for the Control Room to ensure optimisation, with subjective principles from the key stakeholders a second consideration. The primary focus was to optimise the communication links in the Control Room, to support efficient and quicker decision making on key Control processes such as Incident Management and Disruption Management. The Human Factors approach utilised functional task analysis to achieve an overview of workload distribution and to identify frequent and critical communication links which supported key Control processes being delivered effectively. The as is / to be workstation assessment looked at ergonomics and workstation setup to reduce non-value adding tasks such as desk reorganisation, switching between programmes and manual switching between screens using the latest technology and workstation setup.
The outputs of the project included a Human Factors Assessment Report which detailed the functional task analysis, workloads and set out the key linkages between roles with a priority attached to critical processes. This was summarised into a key linkage document. Floor plan design options where then generated based on the key linkages document. The current floor plan was assessed with the key linkages showing a score of 55%, explaining some of the current challenges of the existing setup.
The preferred options generated as part of this project was assessed as having up to 85% compliance to the key linkages in the Control Room, an effective increase of 30% in communications efficiency.
