Andrew Haines
Managing Director, FirstGroup Rail Division
July 10 2006
Andrew Haines, Managing Director of the Rail Division of FirstGroup addressed a healthy crowd from the Young Professionals on July 10th. He started by charting his own railway career, rising from the lost luggage office at Victoria to the MD of the country's largest train operating group with some 23% of the passenger market.
The path to the top was certainly an interesting one. After graduating from the BR management training scheme, Andrew was able to benefit from both operating and commercial experience from working in station management, prior to the reduction in operating scope of station staff resulting from the privatisation process. The next move, to a job acting as a liaison between the 
BRB and Parliament was certainly not a typical railway career move, but undoubtedly paid dividends in helping him grasp transport politics – and useful in the current railway environment. The high profile of the job would perhaps be useful in years to come as well.
Having overseen the break up of the public sector giant, the next move was to the infrastructure owner Railtrack where as an account manager he created the access regime and basic contractual framework that operators use to access the network. However frustration caused by the structure of the industry led Mr Haines to depart to a TOC, in this case South West Trains, where he undertook a regional management role encompassing fleet, train-crew, stations and revenue protection. Despite enjoying this period, the promotion to Operations Director and subsequently Managing Director were moves that clearly could not be resisted.
It could be argued that the only place left to go upwards in TOC land after heading up the largest passenger franchise was to head up the parent group of the largest franchise operator, who also happens to be the owner of an open access TOC and freight operator.
As well as having 13,000 staff in the Rail Division to manage, and tough financial objectives, FirstGroup has other challenges unique to the individual franchises. In Scotland, the challenge has been to maintain progress from what was a reasonable starting point, while also reap the gains from the network expansion projects such as the Airdrie - Bathgate line. The First Great Western franchise has required not only organisational challenges from merging the Wessex and FGW link franchises with the higher profile operators, but also a need to manage a period of substantial engineering as infrastructure and rolling stock assets are renewed and re-built and some enhancement schemes are completed. The means by which FirstGroup intend to continue expanding and winning franchises was also discussed, including identifying and targeting the large segments of the public who had not ruled out rail as a transport choice but currently use other modes. 
Mr Haines spent some time talking about the company ethos and the importance of having corporate principles to abide by, investment in people being a particularly important one. The need to communicate these adequately, including good news as well as explaining unpopular decisions is imperative. An important point that Andrew was also able to make, is that the railway industry often considers itself a poor relation in terms of management ability, which is perhaps unduly harsh these days. In his case, studying with individuals from other sectors had given him this useful opportunity to benchmark railway management against other sector employees.
By drawing on his experiences, some useful advice was also dispensed. This included not considering any task to be beneath you, urging sufficient attention to people management and the importance of broadening your horizons career wise. The failing of many people to not deliver in their current jobs due to being preoccupied with the future was also astutely commented upon - “Live in the world you are in”. The importance of enjoying what you do was also underlined – without this you will struggle.
An interesting question and answer session followed, many being particularly interested to hear how difficult it is in Andrew Haines perception 
to gain the range of experience that some felt was perhaps more easily achieved by working for a single company (BR). His answer to this was that even under BR, experience was not necessarily gained without some major geographical upheaval and difficult decisions. It was also pointed out that changing employers is far from unusual outside the railway industry. The point was also made that the short rotations on graduate training schemes do not always give enough immersion to gain a full understanding – sometimes doing the job full time is the only way.
All in all, a thoroughly interesting evening with some valuable points made that were greatly appreciated by those assembled.
Written by Ian Lake.
Photos courtesy Michael Pead (© 2006).
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