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CILTHK Newsletter issue 9 04
tables’ showing who is better than
whom. In fact, the essence of
benchmarking is to create new
attitudes of mind that will lead to
superior, or at least improved,
performance. The question is not on
‘how do we look’ but ‘what shall we
do’? Where any organization appears
in a ‘league table’ will of course
depend on managerial performance,
but it will also depend on history and
many other factors.
A fundamental pre-requisite for
successful benchmarking is
commitment to organizational
change. Indeed the management of
change is the greatest challenge to
managers at the beginning of the
21st century. The disciplines of
project (or programme) management,
and the associated management of
risk (RAMP 1998), are now
increasingly being applied far more
widely in business than simply to
support the management of discrete
investments. Because the
management of change requires
dedicated commitment and
leadership from the top,
benchmarking should clearly be seen
to have the support and drive of top
management.
Equally, because benchmarking
regularly involves partnerships
between organizations that may be
competitors, often using confidential
information, a high degree of trust
is required. Thus the partners will
have to work out a formal method of
working, which certainly is the case
with the client bodies in the
benchmarking groups with which
RTSC is involved.
The clients for RTSC’s metro
benchmarking have chosen both
principal and secondary key
performance indicators (KPIs) for
examination. The principal KPIs are
• Background - network size and
passenger volumes, operated
capacity km and passenger
journeys, car-km and network
route-km
• Asset utilization - capacity km/
route-km, passenger km/capacity
km
• Reliability/service quality -
revenue operating car-km
between incidents, car hours
between incidents, car hours/hour
train delay
• Efficiency - passenger journeys/
total staff + contractor hours,
revenue car- km/total staff +
contractor hours
• Financial - total commercial
revenue/operating cost, total
cost/revenue car operating km,
service operations cost + staff
hours, administrative cost + staff
hours/car-km, investment cost/
revenue car operating km
• Safety - total fatalities/total
passenger journeys.
All of the metros in our two ‘clubs’ are
successful to a greater or lesser extent,
according to their own circumstances.
Although, by comparing KPIs, we are
comparing performance, metros are
essentially competing with themselves
by seeking to learn best practice from
others.
Both Hong Kong, where I held
executive responsibility, and
Singapore, where I was first an
advisor and am now an academic, have
world-class metro systems. Hong Kong
is part of CoMET and Singapore is part
of NOVA. Each currently chairs its
respective ‘club’.
In Hong Kong revenue has covered
operating, maintenance, renewal and
construction costs. In Singapore
construction costs were not covered.
Does this mean that the people in
Hong Kong (including myself) were
somehow ‘better’ than the people in
Singapore? Not at all. The
circumstances are very different,
particularly the urban densities. The
point is that both Hong Kong and
Singapore defined their own objectives
in their own context and met them –
but importantly, met them in an
affordable way.
Service
Part of the task of ‘defining the
objectives’ for urban transport is to
determine what the customer wants
or needs. We will not satisfy the
customer unless we understand the
nature of the service we provide and
what customers want from that
service. Urban public transport has
been moving along a spectrum in
recent years. Originally the ethos was
that of production. It moved on to
focus on the market, whereas now
the emphasis is on service.
What is a service? It is
essentially a process. In contrast
to a product, a service cannot be
stored since it is produced and
consumed at the same time.
Indeed the customer becomes part
of the service process. It has taken
some considerable time for
engineers, indeed many operators,
to comprehend this crucial difference
between production and service.
With concentration on production we
tend to ignore demand questions in
the economic equation. Efficiency of
supply is important, but an
understanding of the delicate balance
between supply and demand is
crucial. The production mentality
concentrates exclusively on
production measures – car-km, cost
reduction, staff numbers.
The 1960s and 1970s were decades
of production orientation whereas
during the 1980s we started, or were
forced, to concentrate on the market.
Now the service ethos is everywhere.
Culture, image, service targets are at
the heart of our businesses. Customer
perception is of fundamental
importance. We seek total quality and
wish to identify our staff with that
ethos.
I have said elsewhere (Ridley 1994)
that the task of engineers, or of
operators for that matter, is to get
things done. Of course that is not
enough. We must get things done
efficiently (get things done well) and
effectively (get the right things
done). There is a great tendency to