A MESSAGE FROM THE CEO
Further to my contribution to The Whistle Board a few weeks ago after my first week at RISSB, I’d like to offer some further thoughts and ideas on how RISSB can be helping to further improve and expedite reform in the Australian rail industry.
I’m currently working with our staff to better understand how we go about producing our products, the inputs into that process, and how the benefits (i.e., Safety, Financial, Economic, Social, Environmental, etc.) are ultimately realised.
And there’s 4 key things that we’re looking at:
1. How broadly do we engage with industry and government to capture all of the challenges and opportunities to be considered in the development of RISSB products?
2. Considering that, inevitably, there’s likely more work to be done than we have resources for, how do we prioritise and select proposals for the annual RISSB program?
3. Once we have a project underway, I’m keen to understand how we take into consideration technology, innovations, international experiences, incidents, etc., into our development process
4. And finally, how do we (all of industry) ensure that the originally anticipated benefits of the product development work are actually realised, and new operating methods, standards, etc., are embedded into our respective operating businesses.
There’s a saying I like to quote that reflects the real-world difficulty of executing change: “Execution is where good strategy goes to die!" I’d like to think that RISSB has a role in ensuring our products take into account the challenges of implementing the changes. Indeed, we may have a role in assisting the implementation process.
And then there’s the task of better understanding the backlog of work in the interoperability and harmonisation space (not just the RISSB work plan, but also where industry participants are undertaking similar work themselves) and understanding emerging challenges and opportunities to ensure we have the correct capability and capacity to cater for industry and government reform demands and
expectations.
I did a short webinar recently (to access it follow this link) which might help explain where my thinking is at in relation to the above (apologies to all the vegetarians out there!). The associated PowerPoint can be downloaded here.
Damien White
RISSB CEO
