MetroBus

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :21/05/2007 16:04:12

MetroBus: The fastway to ease Metrobus growing pains

MD Alan Eatwell tells Robert Pols how Metrobus has faced the challenges of growth and invested to improve its service to passengers in London and the South-East

Written by Robert Pols & Produced by Paul Radbourne

The Metrobus operation is a little unusual, since the company operates its bus services in both regulated and deregulated sectors. Some 70 percent of its work is run from its Orpington and Croydon depots and is under contract to Transport for London (TfL). But at Crawley, apart from one six-bus TfL route, there are 114 vehicles dedicated to commercial operations.

“When working for TfL, we’re entirely bound by its requirements,” explained MD Alan Eatwell. “TfL handles the administration and marketing, while the role of the operating company is principally confined to HR and vehicle management. But when you’re an own-account operator, as we are at Crawley, it’s entirely under our own control whether or not the business flourishes.”

In fact the Metrobus business does flourish, and a significant contribution to growth has been made by Fastway. This award-winning initiative is supported by local councils, BAA and other private companies. Linking Crawley, Horley and Gatwick, the service uses dedicated lanes, guideways and priorities at traffic lights to transport the airport’s workforce quickly and reliably. In doing so, it reduces both site traffic and pressure on parking space.

Need for investment

But the current health of the business has been hard won. “When we were acquired by Go-Ahead in 1999, our turnover was £13 million,” said Eatwell. “Now it’s just over £50 million, and passenger figures increased over that period at a similar rate. But we did suffer some severe growing pains and we reached the point where it was clear we had to invest heavily in infrastructure.”

The biggest depot, at Orpington, needed to be rebuilt completely. The obvious preference was to start from scratch on a new piece of land, but none was available. So the company had to tackle the unenviable task of redeveloping a working depot. Because of safety considerations, only half the fleet could operate from the site and space two miles away was leased as an outstation for the remaining 80 buses. It was an undesirable situation that bred inefficiencies and led to a distinct downturn in financial performance.

On completion of Orpington’s transformation, however, matters improved and other vital infrastructure changes were managed under less troubling conditions. The Godstone depot was essentially a rural facility that had evolved to cope with urban routes and demands. It was no longer adequate. In this instance, however, a more logical agenda proved possible. An entirely new depot was built in Croydon; then Metrobus moved in and Godstone was closed down.

At Crawley, too, some changes were made. Investment at this site (already adopted as home to the company’s head office) created a centralised workshop to handle vehicle maintenance tasks for the whole of the organisation.

Post-growth strategy

It was a difficult period of adjustment and it carried a weighty price ticket. “But we’ve now put those changes behind us,” Eatwell insisted. “Things have picked up and we’re looking forward with some confidence. We experienced a high level of growth in a relatively short space of time, but we’re now in a period of stability.

“The majority of our contracts with TfL will take us through into 2008, though our new depots give us the capacity to bid for further TfL opportunities as they emerge in the future. In the deregulated market, we’re serving the town of Crawley pretty well exclusively (though some other operators do pass through). We’re also investing here in order to bring extra vehicles into the schedules to improve the frequency and reliability of services.”

The buses are, of course, a vital asset, but so are the people who drive them. They make up the vast majority of the Metrobus workforce. There’s a shallow management structure with a team of four local directors, and administrative staff are kept to a minimum. (Such functions as payroll and accounting, for instance, are outsourced to another Go-Ahead subsidiary in Newcastle upon Tyne.)

Equipped for the job

So some 1100 of the 1200 employees are bus drivers, and the very nature of their work makes management something of a challenge. They may start their shifts in the evening or very early in the morning, and there is contact only when they clock in and clock out. Communication isn’t easy and workers spend most of their time on their own. It’s vital, therefore, that they are well equipped to do the job, and this puts recruitment and training high on the Metrobus agenda.

Suitably skilled labour is an expensive commodity, and the company wage rates are among the highest in its sector across the south-east. Nevertheless, there has to be some turnover in a workforce of that size, and an extensive training programme supplies the need created by the natural movement of people.

The Metrobus driver training school has a manager, six instructors and as many training vehicles. In addition, all drivers and workshop staff have the opportunity to undertake NVQ programmes. There is also a small but significant graduate intake, and a ‘Train to Gain’ scheme is currently being discussed with the trade union and local Colleges.

Though the scope for marketing is restricted to work in the deregulated sector, Metrobus makes the most of its limited opportunities. “Within our Crawley operation we employ a marketing manager, whose highest priority is determining customer satisfaction,” said Eatwell, “and we do get the right messages coming back. We’ve also continued to have steady growth in passenger journeys, year on year, despite everything that has been happening; and feedback suggested that customers weren’t really conscious of the tasks we were addressing.”

Having weathered those difficulties, he is understandably upbeat about the future. “There will be challenges ahead, naturally, in terms of London traffic congestion, the cost of labour and environmental pressures. But we’re now at a point of consolidation – though always keeping an eye open for the possibility of expansion – and our aspiration is to grow larger and to continue operating successfully while we do so.”