Engineering

Overview

The Engineering team at Greater Anglia is responsible for the upkeep of the rolling stock. The maintenance and professional engineering activities ensure that the rolling stock used is kept in a safe and serviceable state for our customers. There are about 300 colleagues in the team ranging from cleaners to chartered engineers with a wide variety of careers and roles.

Our fleet of trains include vehicles which are over 30 years old to those which were only brought into use in April 2011. The skill set for each rolling stock is varied and ranges from skilled mechanical work to fault finding electronic systems.

A key aspect of the role of the Engineering team is to work with other departments and organisations (including Network Rail) to identify smarter ways of conducting our business and deliver continuous improvements to the services we provide our customers.

Materials and Logistics Team

The engineering team also contains a materials and logistics team which procure and source the parts needed for the maintenance function, again ensuring that the parts supplied meet the exacting safety and reliability standards.

Professional Engineers

The professional engineers in the team carry out in-depth investigations into any significant shortcoming of the rolling stock, proposing changes to enhance safety, reliability and passenger comfort.

Work continues round the clock; the depot teams always have someone on hand to help if things go wrong, with staff based out and about on the railway to respond quickly in the event of breakdowns. Maintenance is carried out at all hours with significant servicing taking place during the night when the vehicles are stood down for a short while.

Contractors

Some maintenance work is contracted out, and in this case the Engineering team acts as an informed buyer, managing these contracts to ensure that they meet the exacting standards required and do so for a price that the business and customer can afford.

Stores Department

Size of the department / teams

1 Material and Services Manager
1 Assistant Material and Services Manager
1 Stores Materials Progress Chaser
5 Stores Issuer/goods in/out
All issuers are on a 2 shift rota
3 Depot Cleaners

What they do / responsible for?

The main aim of the stores team is to get the Trains out on time and running to their full potential. Stores team issue train parts to the teams in the shed to enable this. The issuers day to day routine is to receive train parts and cleaning materials for use on the trains. They carry out stock inventory on a weekly basis ensuring that the stock is correct.. They also send material away for repair on a daily basis. They are all required to have a fork lift licence for safe transport of heavy train parts around the depot.

The issuers have a key role to play as they have to be acutely aware of Health and 'Safety Standards' needed around a busy car depot.

Stores Chaser does exactly that, any orders that are outstanding and are required urgently they would chase the suppliers for lead times.