International benchmarking of Network Rail’s operations and support functions expenditure
The UK Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) draft determination for the 2013 Periodic Review of Network Rail is the culmination of extensive analysis and consultation with industry, funders and other stakeholders. As part of this analysis, civity made a comparison of the cost of the support and operations functions in a number of European railways.
The ORR is currently determining Network Rail’s funding for Control Period 5 (2014-2019). In this context, the ORR commissioned civity to benchmark Network Rail’s operations and support functions expenditure with other European railway infrastructure managers.
The comparator group comprised a mixture of dedicated railway infrastructure managers, and the railway infrastructure elements of vertically integrated railways and organisations that manage national transport infrastructure from six European countries.
The operations functions include those activities required to operate the infrastructure, such as signallers and traffic control staff.
Support functions are the central activities that support the infrastructure manager’s core business. The study focuses on six of these functions: workplace management, asset management, information management, human resources, procurement, and finance – as these cover the majority of the total support functions expenditure.
The full report is available here.