Cross sector collaboration brings added benefit to South Eastern Railway
We recently caught up with Joe Killner, Operations Standards Specialist at South Eastern Railway to talk about his membership of the ACMS Cross-TOC Working Group.
The aim of the ACMS Cross-TOC working group is to bring together individuals from different organisations who are using ACMS to share best practice and learning, discuss common challenges, standardise the approach to the Rail Industry Standards and help influence the development roadmap of ACMS.
Being part of the working group has been extremely useful. It is great to have individuals from AssessTech at the meeting as, when we are talking about challenges we are facing, the team can recommend solutions that are already in place and share insights into how other customers are tackling those challenges.
Joe joined the group as he wanted to meet with individuals from other TOCs who were using ACMS to understand how they were using the system, what issues they were facing (and how they had solved these issues) and to pick up tips and hints from others.
Joe highlighted two (of many) benefits that he has experienced being a member of the group…
- He gained insight into modules that SER hadn’t subscribed to. Joe could get an understanding of how these modules were being used by other TOCs and find out exactly what benefits these modules would offer his company (something that’s not always clear from the website or user manuals).
- Competence management is only a small element of Joe’s job, so he doesn’t have time to explore all the features the system has to offer. Talking to others who are focused on eCMS as a full-time role enabled him to understand better all the nuances, detail and data insights that can be extracted from the system. If he has an idea but can’t work out how to action it, the group can provide insights and ways to move forward.
Working collaboratively with individuals from across other TOCs means as a group, each company is…
- Working smarter
- Adopting more efficient processes
- Collaboratively helping to evolve the system; and
- As a group, they can influence the AssessTech development team to work on essential things that are needed, rather than ‘nice to haves’.
Joining the group offers a number of benefits including..
- Understanding what modules other TOCs are using and the benefits these offer.
- Gain insights into challenges faced by other TOCs.
- Shared insights into how to set up ACMS from the outset to ensure it works for a specific organisation.
- Meeting and listening to others in similar positions to you.