RSG and RDG merge

This from the Rail Delivery and Rail Supply Groups...

WORKING TOGETHER – NEW PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN RAIL SUPPLY GROUP AND RAIL DELIVERY GROUP

• New partnership will give supply chain a stronger voice
• Move will ensure both groups are better joined-up
• RSG chair Gordon Wakeford will join RDG board
• RDG chief executive Paul Plummer will join RSG council
• RSG council remains independent and becomes RDG’s fourth ‘strategic board’

The Rail Supply Group (RSG) and the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) have announced a new partnership to coordinate shared objectives better and to strengthen further the industry’s voice.

The creation of a new partnership, using the resources of RDG to better support and join-up the work of the two groups, will:

• Maintain a clearer, independent voice for the rail supply chain within RDG;
• Offer closer alignment and collaboration between train operators, Network Rail and their supply chains;
• Streamline activities and avoid duplication, ensuring more efficient use of combined resources;
• Continue to jointly sponsor groups relating to technology and skills;
• Give government and stakeholders a ‘one-stop-shop’ for relations with the industry;
• Give clearer focus on unique RSG activities around exports, imports and inward investment;

The arrangement, while maintaining the RSG’s necessary independence, will see the RSG become a new strategic board of the RDG and its chair will become a full member of the RDG’s board. The partnership has also appointed Programme Director Anna Del Vecchio as an industry secondee from Amey, who will ensure that the supply chain’s independence is maintained.

Notwithstanding the super-abundance of bullet points in the release, this is good news.

Not least because the supply chain lobbied to be part of the Rail Delivery Group when the body was first set up in 2011, following the McNulty Review.

UPDATE: This from George Ramshaw Curry (via the digital ouija board)...

Meanwhile back in the world of work the sons of Martha at the Railway Industry Association continue with the hard slog of actually helping British industry to export more, innovate, become more efficient and try and understand their domestic monopoly customers etc etc. 

Not to mention actually trying do do something about Network Rail renewals falling off a financial cliff edge in the last year of CP5.