Rail

At Oaklin, we help leaders in the Rail industry to shape and deliver responses to complex problems across people, process and technology, deploying small teams to work closely with you, and make transformative change happen at pace. We bring industry knowledge and awareness, functional expertise, and a passion for innovation that enables us to deliver success for our clients.

The rail industry is essential to the UK. As it undergoes significant shifts due to changing commuter patterns, government funding, and modernisation, Oaklin want to be on the forefront of enabling change. Rail is a significant contributor to the UK economy and we want to ensure swift, innovation-driven action is at the core of our Rail projects.

What we do

Oaklin have worked with Network Rail and a number of rail adjacent partners with a focus on four key outputs:

Commercial Advisory: finding business partners with the right expertise and experience for working on rail;
Project & Programme Management: delivering complex change across people, process and technology;
Innovation: we help organisations generate fresh ideas and source new technologies, collaborating rapidly to identify those which will stick and which will add value;
Change Management: through carefully executed adoption plans, we help colleagues, teams and organisations embrace, embed and use new changes.

Oaklin also has a deep understanding of the strict standards and procedures required for NR partners, particularly for track-side working where lifesaving rules apply.

Outside of our work with clients in the sector, we are committed to expanding our knowledge of rail, and becoming leaders in the industry. We have demonstrated this through our publication of thought leadership pieces (available below) weighing in on critical issues to the rail sector – such as how we can use Artificial Intelligence to find efficiencies and innovative practices, the centrality of customer experience to the future of rail, and the impact of public policy, including Great British Railways.

In the last year, we have become members of the Rail Forum, and are making the most of the opportunities on offer to meet fellow industry players and further our understanding of the key challenges facing stakeholders today.

At Oaklin, we provide the expertise, experience and good judgement that our clients require to change at scale. We deliver change for our clients that enables them to flourish, focusing on positive outcomes through innovation, hard work, and deep industry knowledge. Start the conversation around your transformation journey today at rail@oaklin.com

Insights

Heard about Great British Railways but not sure what it is? Here’s our recap of where GBR has come from, where it’s stationed currently, and where it might be destined with the upcoming election.

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At Oaklin we always like a challenge, so we wanted to test ourselves and see what ideas we could come up with regarding customer experience in the rail sector. We therefore harnessed some of our energy by hosting an open-door session to share experiences and spark ideas on the rail industry using Design Thinking methods.

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At Oaklin, we recognise the challenges an ever-evolving technology landscape brings to the transport sector. Integrating modern technologies whilst maintaining consistent travel experiences can be extremely challenging. It calls for thorough decision-making and innovative project management.

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Every person that Oaklin has provided to work with Network Rail has added so much value and they always get up to speed really quickly. It’s also nice to see that the Oaklin team support each other - we don't see that with all consultancies, and I think that also has a big impact on their success.

Head of End-User Compute, Network Rail

Case Studies

Commercial Advisory for the Whole Deal Lifecycle

Oaklin provided commercial advisory services to deliver a new workplace service capability for 40k users.

The legacy contract for Service Desk and user support had not been tendered for 8 years.

Oaklin looked to exploit Network Rail’s recent investments in a new service desk, CMDB(s) data centres and a new laptop deployment programme. This provided an opportunity to reconsider the service outcomes and drive for a better user experience at a far lower cost.

Oaklin ran thorough requirements gathering and market engagement to develop the tender to provide simple business services with a unit priced commercial model. The market engagement demonstrated new approaches and 20 service areas to improve Network Rail’s dated delivery models.

The tender result was a far better service level for users with experience-based measures and a significant OPEX saving of over £30m over the five-year contract term.

IT Service Management Backlog Support

The client had a backlog of ServiceNow enhancements which had been raised by service users. Network Rail did not have a dedicated business analyst role to review the enhancements, prioritise and build out sufficient detail to support development. New functionality was identified as part of the backlog which required the support of a Project Manager.

The business analyst assigned 62% of the enhancements in the backlog for development, complete with user stories and detailed requirements, an improvement on the original 28%. Requirements for the 3 in-flight projects were documented and shared, and next steps detailed for the client to continue. A comprehensive handover was completed, including a detailed set of recommendations, and prioritised list of enhancements.

Service Transformation

NR were struggling to ensure device returns when its employees leave the organisation, with only 22% of laptops and 28% of mobiles being returned via the official process. Over the previous 6-years, 14,500 laptops had not been returned, at a cost of almost £15m. Oaklin was approached by NR to address these issues.

Through workshops and data analysis, Oaklin defined the as-is state of device returns and employed user journey mapping to identify the pain points. This provided clarity to the issues and enabled a series of process, policy and technological changes to be considered to address them.

Through the proposed centralisation and process changes up to £30m savings over 5 years were identified, as well as further benefits in reducing environmental waste and the leaver’s security access risk.

Delivering savings, improving cost controls and agreeing more favourable contract terms.

With increasing costs and a service that had not been tendered for in nearly 10 years, Oaklin provided commercial advisory expertise for the procurement of a £60m multi-year mobile connectivity and services provider.

Oaklin advised across the full sourcing lifecycle including:

Market assessment and sourcing strategy development
Solution design and requirements definition
Tender preparation and support
Commercial due diligence
Contract negotiation and implementation planning.

The tender activity resulted in committed annual savings of £1.5m OPEX, improved pricing controls within the contract and improvements to service management and asset management capabilities.

The best thing about Oaklin is their dynamic engagement, speed to mobilise programmes and understand the issues and risks involved. Their speedy and thorough analysis which thinks both through and round NR problem statements leads to a quicker and more fruitful engagement than the transactional approach we often see from other similar providers.

Head of Commercial Services, Network Rail