Tim Shoveller introduced Mark Steward (Safety & Operations Director, EMT) at this well-attended event by describing him as an expert in the field of traincrew resourcing, a subject rarely talked about in detail these days. Once Mark began his presentation, it soon became apparent that he doesn’t just have the expertise – he also has a passion for it too.
Mark began by saying that the session would be like a ‘historical maths lesson’ comparing the processes of the BR days with today’s methodology with a working example thrown in for good measure.
Using a fictitious depot with 100 daily driver diagrams, Mark described the processes and calculations followed under BR in the 1980s and, using a 35% spare coverage, he advised that this depot would require an establishment of 166 drivers based on a balanced roster working on an 8 week cycle with diagrams of between 7 and 9 hours.
Mark explained the important relationship between contracted hours, average turn length, annual leave and number of rest days.
The Driver Restructuring Initiative (DRI) of the 1990s changed many aspects of terms and conditions giving drivers a clean salary in exchange for the removal of numerous allowances and the easing of many of the restrictions around diagramming. This led to drivers having a higher hourly rate and more rest days which would cater for the increase in average turn length.
The increased flexibility now gained through more efficient diagrams enabled our fictitious depot to reduce daily diagrams to 80. Using the same pre DRI methodology, this would now require a depot establishment of 153 (a 7.8% reduction) but with a reduced driver availability of 11.6% in available days per annum.
Mark commented on the many costly mistakes that have been made in the industry over recent years as a direct result of the failure to understand the impact of agreeing to changes in terms and conditions; one such example was management’s failure to correctly calculate annual leave entitlements. This is also the case on a local basis where some seemingly innocuous decisions have proved to be very costly.
Driver salaries have grown significantly over the years, meaning they are less likely to consider career progression. The clean salary effect also means there can be less incentive for a driver to return to driving duties following absence or restriction, something that had not been fully appreciated at the time of negotiating DRI agreements.
This was a fascinating talk that demonstrated the importance of understanding the costly implications of making poor agreements.