Background
Network Rail owns, operates and develops Britain’s railway infrastructure consisting of 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals and level crossings and run 20 of the UK’s largest stations. The supply chain team based in Milton Keynes and, are responsible for managing the supply chain network that consists of around 4,000 suppliers who supply vital services, from catering to designing innovative technology that keeps the railway running safely.

Requirement
CMI Synergy was approached to run an internal efficiency trial, a four-month project to identify ways of taking low level tasks away from their procurement specialists, so freeing up their time to manage high value activity.  CMI were supported on the project by two admin assistants provided by Network Rail.

Approach
CMI held discussions with stakeholders to identify the tasks and processes that could be migrated away from the procurement team. Working closely with the admin assistants, CMI mapped the processes and developed operating manuals so the activities could easily be followed. A timesheet system was also set up to monitor the activities undertaken by the admin team so that the relative savings of time and cost could be monitored and analysed.

Following a period of training and initial support, a three-month trial was conducted. During this time, additional processes were identified and added, improving the range of activity which could be performed.

Outcomes
Following the trial, the data was analysed and presented in a final report outlining evidence-based recommendations for implementing potential efficiency savings across the department.