York ROC

CASE STUDY – JFRail

Leading and delivering a Fit Out and Business Change Programme for York ROC using clear staff engagement tools with all organisations.

Jon Fenn of JFRail Consulting has knowledge and experience of delivering major operational programmes dating back to 2012.

One of the largest Operational Programmes delivered included York ROC and its fit out and migration of Operational functions into the largest ROC in the UK.

The fit out included taking the shell and core and leading the programme of works to ensure that coordination took place between key user groups from maintenance, NR Operations Control, Operators in the York IECC (East Coast, Northern and Grand Central) to deliver an aligned and agreed set of requirements from all parties for the functional building.

Once the fit out was concluded, the programme was tasked with developing the migration plan to bring all of the organisations into the building, initially commencing with the Control functions from Network Rail and Operators, then local maintenance teams, the first signalling workstations from Sheffield recontrol onto the Operational floor with the Control function, and finally Electrical Control.

Dynamic and innovative approaches were developed alongside robust governance to ensure that for the first time signalling and Control functions from different organisations could work alongside each other on the same operational floor. This included significant modelling with key stakeholders and growing relationships through their interaction which was intended to eventually transfer into the new building as part of the new ways of working.

New technologies were trialled and experimented with to ensure we considered all the impacts from all the functions and organisations working together. This included implementing white noise curtain technology between signalling and control and huddle tables with touch screen technology to promote better collaboration between teams.

The most important element that the programme team led was the business and culture change part of the programme. This was again focused around the benefits of better collaboration between teams from across the industry to manage the train service from York ROC and promoting strong relationships between teams and individuals to ensure a better working environment. This was focused through using the working groups to draw an affiliation to the new building by giving it an identity and bringing it to life through communications and materials that were branded and focused on ‘York ROC’.

The approach taken to deliver the overall programme was focused on engaging the existing organisations directly using survey tools at key decision points to collate opinion and views, sharing these with the working groups and coming to a joint conclusion on what direction to take on everything from coffee machines / break out areas through to developing an onsite gym and health package to support wellbeing.

The final survey sent out to the organisations requested feedback from all involved as to how they felt about how the process had been undertaken and their views on the outcomes achieved. The most striking result was that 85% of respondents (around 150 in total) said they felt engaged in the process to develop York ROC and its fit out, which is one of the highest ever achieved.