All aboard - bringing Network Rail together
A new headquarters for Network Rail is delivering public savings of £30m a year by bringing together 3,000 employees under one roof.
National Centre for Network Rail Project summary
Client
Network Rail Limited
Project value
£108m
Key partners
HJA Partnership One LLP
Services provided
Project and programme management, Cost consultancy, Consult
Sectors
Locations
Project timeline
- Start date
- April 2009
- End date
- August 2012
Project story
Network Rail’s new national centre in Milton Keynes now provides office accommodation and support facilities for up to 3,500 Network Rail employees.
As programme and project managers, our challenge was to increase employee productivity and reduce costs. Rather than having employees spread across several under-utilised offices, Network Rail wanted to bring people together into a single location to drive savings of approximately £30m a year.
By analysing how each team worked and auditing the unoccupied space across Network Rail’s estate, we redesigned the internal layout of the new building to maximise flexibility and standardised working practices.
The new offices support Network Rail's aspiration to accelerate the pace of cultural change across the business, through a change programme that brings the right people together into a single location. The programme also offered a shared working environment based around an average employee to desk ratio of 7:10.
Business continuity was paramount, therefore we planned workforce transition and location planning around service delivery. We released floors and buildings in phases built around critical business milestones and with an emphasis on operational readiness.
Project stats
Image Gallery
“The project is an unusual one for Network Rail in that it is essentially an office development nowhere near a railway and it has opened up many channels for learning and understanding between Mace and Network Rail, and vice versa.”
“The National Centre is a large office campus development in Milton Keynes. The programme was a challenging one and the individuals from Mace were able to blend well with the Network Rail project team and work in a highly collaborative way. The project achieved all of its programme milestones and was delivered under the construction budget. The project is viewed very much as a success story for Network Rail.”
