Chiltern Railways

Up to the winter of 2013 Chiltern Railways had been using their own maintenance staff to provide a reactive gritting and snow clearing service to meet their H&S obligations for their 32 stations, platforms and car parks. These stations run on the line for

THE PROBLEMS

Chiltern Railways had a number of problems with how they were delivering the service

• They did not have access to a professional forecast service that showed road surface temperatures.
• They had to deal with the problems reactively once the hazards were on the ground .This put into question how effective they were dealing with the winter risk management and the likelihood of them having a claim of their insurance.
• Carrying out these extra gritting/snow clearing duties pulled staff away from their normal duties. Putting maintenance staff behind their schedule and staff from collecting ticketing sales.
• Staff overtime charges went up during cold weather periods.

THE SOLUTION

We were approached by Chiltern Railways and asked for a proposal on helping with their winter risk management

• Our forecasting system put in place the ability to grit proactively.
• We took over the gritting of car parks and outlying areas freeing staff to concentrate on platforms only.
• Chiltern received daily alerts for gritting.

VALUATION:

• The reduced amount of gritting to platforms only for the Chilterns allowed staff to catch up on their day to day schedule even in cold weather.
• The daily alerts allowed Chiltern to proactively grit platforms reducing overtime requirement.
• The gritting of unmanned station platforms at night was moved to us to reduce Chiltern costs further.