Fiona Taylor, Route Director (Sussex), Network Rail
After running a busy airport terminal, FIONA TAYLOR landed a top job with Network Rail. PAUL WHITING met up with the route director, Sussex, at equally busy London Victoria station to talk about her passion – looking after the customer.
Back in her twenties, Fiona Taylor spent a year as a holiday rep in the Canary Islands, responding to the many and varied demands of holidaymakers young and old.
Her stint in the Spanish sunshine islands gave her the chance to hone her linguistic skills. But more importantly for what was to be her chosen career path, she mastered the art of looking after the customer.
Those 12 hectic months now seem a long time ago and as Fiona, 44, admits: “I would not have the energy now!”.
But the skills she learned in customer service have stood her in good stead in a career which has taken her from running Heathrow’s second busiest terminal to landing a top job at Network Rail – as route director, Sussex.
“Being a tour rep was a very good early learning experience, very much about relationships and dealing with people,” she says.
Fiona never forgets that, above all, she is providing a service for a customer – namely, the train and freight companies, and the passengers.
And that means getting to their destinations safely, efficiently and on time, hundreds of thousands of passengers using the 2,000 trains a day on the network for which she is responsible.
“People are not interested in who or what organisation is controlling their journey. They just want to know that if things go wrong, they will be sorted out,” she says.
When she ran Heathrow’s terminal 3 for BAA – British Airports Authority – Fiona had 700 staff looking after 43 airlines, mostly long haul. Now, as route director, Sussex, she has a ‘patch’ that takes in the Brighton main line, the coastway routes to Chichester and Warblington, the East Grinstead and Uckfield lines, the West London line, and the Reigate to Redhill line.
The main London terminal, London Victoria, has a throughput of some 370,000 people a day and sees 125 million passengers a year.
One of the busiest commuter networks in the country, her route area mirrors the services provided by Southern train company and has a staff of 482 people, ranging from signallers and controllers to local operations managers.
She works closely – in fact, he sits opposite her in her Croydon base – with a Network Rail infrastructure maintenance manager who controls 700 track and signalling maintenance staff.
Fiona’s path to Network Rail came when she was approached while running Terminal 3 at Heathrow.
The Ashford-born manager, who has a languages degree in French and Spanish, had worked for BAA for 17 years. She moved up through the organisation after joining as an information assistant in Terminal 4.
“I had a call out of the blue from a headhunter to talk about jobs with Network Rail. I had no plans to leave the airline industry but I went and met with some senior people.
“I was fascinated to hear about the opportunities to bring my experience to another part of the transport sector – rail, which is booming.”
She subsequently parted company with BAA and joined NR in May 2005 as route operations manager, Kent, when the company was one year into the new organisation of routes.
“My 18 months as route operations manager was really, really invaluable for me, learning about railway operations with all of its complexities.”
She was appointed route director in December 2006. “I get out quite a lot, and make a real effort to get to as many locations as I can. I think it’s important, because the people working in our locations are the people who deliver the railway day in and day out, and they need to know about my plans and aspirations for the route.
“These calls and chats over a cup of tea with people are one of the most rewarding parts of the job. You need to hear things from the frontline.”
Fiona, who lives in Dorking, Surrey, has two young sons aged four and five but manages to juggle her demanding professional life with the support of her husband, who looks after the boys full-time.
“It works for us. I try to spend as much time as I can with the family, but my work is a very important part of my life. I love this job.”
The next few months and years promise to be challenging times for Fiona and her team, with major projects at London Victoria and Gatwick Airport stations, rail utilisation plans to be realised, new Southern services taking in Gatwick Express and a new station near Mitcham. Not to mention resignalling and many planned route improvements.
In fact, more than £200 million of investment is planned for the Sussex route network alone.
Consultation has just finished on the South London Rail Utilisation Strategy, which will likely include measures to increase capacity in an area with huge suppressed demand.
“We also have to juggle with the implications of the Brighton RUS, which will see additional peak services from and to Gatwick when Southern takes over Gatwick Express in 2008.”
Meanwhile, the huge Thameslink 2000 project will have a ‘significant’ impact on Southern services.
One of the biggest improvement schemes to be completed in 2012 will be at Gatwick Airport station, with an £80 million project to create a more effective air/train/bus interchange at a station now described as ‘tired’.
“This major redevelopment is aimed at significantly improving over-crowding and congestion problems at a key rail/air hub where there is growth.”
The link between the station and the airport will be improved, a new platform built and a new track layout created to improve flexibility.
Victoria station in London is in line for a major redevelopment and the extent of the project is being discussed with a preferred developer.
Elsewhere on the Sussex route, a modular station costing £5 million is being built at Eastfields, near Mitcham station, in an area which has suffered from poor rail links. And next year a resignalling project will take place in the Barnham area, along with planned improvements to other stations.
A key move destined to help NR meet performance targets comes in November, when an Integrated Control Centre for Sussex is opened at Caroline House, Croydon, allowing train company and Network Rail controllers to work side by side to resolve delays more quickly.
Sussex route currently has a MAA – Moving Annual Average – performance around the 90 per cent mark and the target is to deliver 92.6 per cent of all trains right time ‘across the piece’.
Fiona says: “Because of the complex nature of the railway network in Sussex, when something causes train delays the knock-on effect is felt long after an incident has closed down.
“To that end we are doing a great deal of work on service recovery and contingency planning.”
There have been several examples when swift and effective action has been needed after incidents. East Croydon station, one of the busiest outside London, had to be totally evacuated and all lines blocked because of a security scare, there was flooding earlier in the year and a train hit and killed a cow on the line. There were also fatalities caused by suicide attempts and trespassers to deal with.
Fiona views her role as twofold – delivering the day job of making sure each operator’s trains run safely and reliably on the infrastructure and also to oversee a raft of enhancements.
She sees as vital the need to listen to colleagues who have many years of experience. “I work with people who have years and years of acquired knowledge – you can’t just find that, you have to value and respect it.
“Recently Sussex route had a long-service awards night. There were people there whose railway experience added up to 1,000 years. I have just two years.
“But that’s what’s great about this job. It’s a brilliant mix of people with experience and people with fresh, new ideas.”