Great Western franchise bid support
National Express
National Express Great Western franchise bid coordination
Overview
In 2012 the Department for Transport (DfT) launched a competition for the 15-year Great Western (GW) franchise award.
- Engineering, rolling stock, maintenance and depot strategy
- Team coordination
- Authored delivery plan
Our client's challenge
The GW franchise is a particularly complex franchise with multiple rolling stock fleet types, multiple service groups covering a highly dispersed train service operation, and multiple depot and stabling facilities.
Added to this the 15-year franchise term covered a period of unprecedented change, including the implementation of the Intercity Express fleet and corresponding transition / withdrawal from existing fleets and depots, extensive electrification, Crossrail introduction, and general disruption arising from the major infrastructure upgrading. The engineering, rolling stock, maintenance and depots work stream is a cornerstone of the franchise bid, especially during such change, as it is required to underpin the timetabling and revenue aspirations as well as supporting all of the operations, customer experience, IT/systems, environment, property, HR and other functional bid components. National Express needed a particularly strong strategy and delivery capability for this bid work stream, one combining creative, articulate and experienced engineering bid writing expertise with confidence and competence on the practical delivery of rolling stock engineering, maintenance and operations.
Our response
Having already amassed a strong franchise bid-writing track record coupled with extensive technical and general management experience in the operational railway, IPEX was well qualified to fulfil NX’s requirement.
IPEX immediately mobilised a crack work stream leader for NX and assembled a team of experts, including commercial, engineering and performance modelling specialists. We quickly gathered available data on the fleets and the depot and maintenance operations and then established a close working strategy team with the work stream leads for timetabling and revenue. IPEX delivered creative bid strategies with deliverable implementation plans for the bid initiatives and formed these into bid content and structure in the emerging delivery plan, following EFQM bid format.
