Moir Lockhead, Chief Executive, FirstGroup plc
A bus maintenance apprenticeship is an unlikely launch pad for huge global success. But it worked for MOIR LOCKHEAD. The FirstGroup chief executive talked to PAUL WHITING about how he made the journey from mining village to renowned boss of an international transport giant.
As a 15-year-old engineering apprentice at a bus maintenance works in the North East, Moir Lockhead never imagined that one day he would head up one of the biggest transport companies in the world.
It’s been a long and eventful journey but the boss of FirstGroup, the international train and bus giant, has still got his eyes firmly fixed on the way forward.
He’s 62, but has no plans to swap his corporate suit for a cap and wellies to retire to his Aberdeenshire farm.
“There’s still far too much to do,” said the chief executive of a company that now has the biggest share of rail franchises in Britain. And, by recently acquiring Laidlaw, a slice of the American bus market as well, with control of the iconic Greyhound bus services.
But today the talk is all about railways, record passengers numbers, major investment and, on the down side, how FirstGroup is dealing with its troublesome franchise, First Great Western.
FirstGroup now controls four train companies, the other three being First ScotRail, First TransPennine Express and First Capital Connect. Together they are responsible for carrying 260 million passengers a year.
FirstGroup also has open-access operator Hull Trains and freight firm First GBRf in its rail stable. Some 12,000 employees are on the payroll.
FGW problems may have been uppermost in Moir Lockhead’s mind for some time but things are looking more positive. On Monday 10 December he proudly stood next to transport secretary Ruth Kelly when the new St Pancras International commuter rail station opened for First Capital Connect passengers on the Thameslink route. And at FGW the gloom is starting to lift.
For the past 12 months, headlines have screamed regularly about the shortcomings in performance on the lines out of Paddington station. In response, FirstGroup is ploughing £200 million into upgrading its HST fleet while Network Rail is spending £750 million on upgrading the tracks.
A new management team has been installed at FGW, with Andrew Haines, FirstGroup’s rail chief, pulling the team together. Now Mr Lockhead is looking for action.
“No problems are insurmountable. The solutions consist of delivering, every hour, every day, every month. The challenge for us and Network Rail is to see a cure found for the performance levels so that we can get back to the over 90 per cent of trains running services on time.”
He is quick to point out that mistakes may have been made in the past. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We tried to do too much too quickly with a massive new railway.”
He says that until the new Greater Western franchise was created, amalgamating the West Country regional services of Wessex, the Thames Valley commuter services and the high-speed services already run by First, performance had been ‘not fantastic’ but was getting consistently better.
A new timetable was brought in and immediately sparked criticism, coming at a time when HSTs were being taken out of service for re-engining and when major changes were being made to regional train maintenance.
But now the 53-train HST fleet is half completed, the new timetable is working better and regional services are improving.
“The HSTs should be completed by early to mid summer next year and what a difference that will make. I am as proud as punch of the work – it is British engineering at its best.”
The FirstGroup boss says that staff on First Great Western have had to deal with a rise in passenger usage of around 50 per cent in the past five or six years. “This has been an enormous increase for our staff to cope with and they have done a fantastic job.”
He is pleased to have seen First TransPennine Express “winning all sorts of awards” in customer satisfaction and delighted by the launch of FTP services between Manchester and Glasgow/Edinburgh last month.
“There are seven trains – all Class 185s – in each direction per day, right into the airport at Manchester. It means Scotland has its first direct link straight into an airport – even if it is in England.”
With his background in engineering, Moir Lockhead is keen to keep a close watch on any mechanical issues affecting his trains. It is 47 years since his parents’ neighbour in a North East England mining village mentioned that, should the young Moir like to present himself at the bus maintenance works in Darlington, he might just be taken on as an engineering apprentice.
He started there at 15 – two days after leaving school. Later came engineering jobs with Tyne and Wear buses. Then, in 1979, he moved north to become chief engineer of Glasgow’s bus and underground systems.
“I’d probably have still been an engineer in Glasgow had it not been for the bus privatisation programme,” he says.
In 1985 he joined Grampian Regional Transport in Aberdeen as general manager to prepare the council-owned bus company for deregulation.
There were fears from the staff that their company would not survive so Moir Lockhead went to council chiefs and persuaded them to sell the company to its employees. Capital was raised for the venture and, in 1989, he led a successful employee/management buy out of the company for £5.5 million. Some five years later the company was listed on the Stock Exchange and in 1995 it merged with Badgerline and FirstBus was created. It became FirstGroup when the company won its first major rail franchise, Great Eastern, in 1996.
Now FirstGroup is the largest UK-listed surface transport group, with a market capitalisation of £3.15 billion, sales over £5 billion a year and 135,000 employees.
Moir Lockhead knows what it is like to come up through the ranks, and sees staff involvement in the business as essential to its well-being. There is a main board employee director with other employee directors feeding in views from grass-roots staff in their companies.
He is also keen to promote continuous learning facilities to enable staff to learn more about computers and languages and even to write short stories. “People have many talents outside their day-to-day work. We want to boost those talents.”
Injury prevention is also high on the list of musts. Each employee, including himself, has a safety book.
“You never want to be the person who has to tell someone that a person in their family has been to hospital with an injury or, worse, killed at work,” says Moir.
Over the years Moir Lockhead has received many plaudits and honours. He was awarded an OBE in 1996, holds an Honorary Chair in Transport at the University of Aberdeen and last October received the Sir Lawrence Award at the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport for his contribution to transport.
He remains modest. “It’s fantastic to get these awards but they only recognise what everyone else is doing in the company.”
His interests away from the city desk could not be further from the ‘day job.’ A family man, he has a daughter, three sons and eight grandchildren, all living within a 20-mile radius of Moir and wife Audrey’s 350- acre Glassel farm on Royal Deeside.
At weekends it’s usually on with the wellies to check out his 250 herd of award-winning Highland cattle. But, he laughs: “I’m only a gentleman farmer, my daughter does a lot of the work and says I am a nuisance coming around and making suggestions.”