Managing rail shutdowns comes with several key challenges, many of which are common across industries. The challenges faced required significant change management, stakeholder engagement and problem solving. There was a disconnect in the team around buy-in for what is best for business, lacking a customer focused approach, and a change resistant attitude. Additionally, there was a perception that closure performance was consistently poor/overrunning against plan and a lack of data to verify or analyse if this perception was reality.

Coming from a mining background into rail, I identified that these challenges required a data approach, shift in team mindset and stakeholder engagement.

Over the last 12 months, we have:

• Developed a performance reporting framework identifying trends, gaps and opportunities
• Shifted team culture toward continuous improvement and customer impact
• Enhanced transparency with timely updates to external stakeholders
• Refined recovery planning for real-time decisions balancing reliability and throughput
• Implemented proactive measures in a reactive environment
• Established a team mindset that maximizes decision-making under time pressure
• Used data and communications to support both planned and unplanned situations