What is a day in the life of a BSOG Manager like?

Planning and reviewing the work of a strong team. All members of the team support one another, which really does make my role easier – particularly as this has been such a busy year, assisting our clients even more than usual.

What do you enjoy the most about your role? 

The people I work alongside; the level of autonomy over my responsibilities; the connection with our clients and contributing to completion of engagements, which are interesting and often challenging but result in a feeling of accomplishment.

What do you least like about your role?

The last 13 months have been a challenge and it has been tough to plan the team’s work in terms of the time available and changing requirements. They have worked extremely hard meeting their deadlines in a very different world.

Describe yourself in 3 words

Down-to-earth, positive, and adaptable.

I asked my 9-year-old daughter how she would describe me; she said funny, independent and a little crazy. I’ll take the first 2!

If you could meet anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Wow – anyone? I love sport and have so many sporting heroes but the people I admire most in this world are those who speak out about injustice and stand up for what they believe in.

What is something most people don’t know about you?

I was born with 6 fingers on my left hand. I wouldn’t always have helped with counting and numbers! Although my dad, who was a milkman, asked the doctor to leave it on so that I could carry more milk bottles!

Do you have any hobbies you like to do outside of work?

I enjoy running, yoga and anything that involves the sea. I also often become embroiled in my daughter’s crafty projects and have found I am a skilled pom pom maker!

Name a song title that best describes your personality

All the Time in the World by Deep Purple – I am not someone who likes to be in a rush (or be rushed!). I am quite a fan of the Cornish concept of ‘Dreckly’, similar to that of the Spanish manana. Unless working to a deadline of course, and then it becomes Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen!

What is your favourite holiday destination?

A campsite in Cornwall with a sea view = paradise. Luckily, I have a sister who very kindly moved there, so I am able to book into the Big Sister B&B with relative ease.

Do you have any pets?

Yes, two 5-year-old cats Woody and Jessie who are brother and sister. Also, a new addition to the family in February – a whirling dervish puppy pointer called Loki. I also share my home with an array of creature creations including pebble people and Lego folk!

What are three things still left on your bucket list?

To run (aka shuffle) the London Marathon

Learn to play chess

Visit Orkney where my Mum’s side of the family are from

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who’s just started their career?

A little bit of self-efficacy goes a long way. Play your role in creating a supportive, working environment. We spend a lot of our waking hours at work and we all have responsibility in it not being something all-consuming and dread-inducing, but fulfilling and rewarding.

 

Read last month’s Employee Spotlight with Chief Executive, Ian Churchill

Operators will need to react quickly to the shifts in demand to limit the financial impact and to set themselves up for a bright future. Clearly public transport, as always, has an important part to play in the movement of people – perhaps more so than ever if ambitious climate change targets are to be achieved. However, the transport needs to be sustainable in more ways than one.

Regular route profitability analysis should be undertaken to help operators make these decisions about their network. This can help to identify entire routes that should be cut, frequency reductions, vehicle capacity reductions (e.g. double to single decks) or to provide a basis to seek Local Authority funding to maintain unprofitable service levels. Route profitability can also help to inform planning for increases to, or for restructuring, fares.

Where to start?

To get a good feel for the performance of a network, analysing the operating profitability at route or route group level would be a sound place to start. This would help provide an overview of the routes that are not performing well – as well as those that are. Focus can then be placed on the poorest performing routes, in an effort to improve overall profitability.

Looking at the route as whole may not tell the full story.

Decisions cannot be made simply based upon the performance of a route. A ‘poor’ performing route may in fact be a feeder route to a highly profitable route so to take direct action on one may negatively impact the other – with the overall effect not being the desired one.

It may also be the case that a route appears to perform poorly; however, there are certain times of the day when it performs well. This is where a detailed understanding of patronage and capacity can pay dividends.

By reviewing the patronage and capacity down to timebands, or even trips, operators can then start to get a much better idea of the performance of a route. The analysis may highlight specific trips/times of the day where capacity can be reduced or removed to help lower costs, whilst limiting the impact on the top line.

Analysis at this level may be crucial to demonstrate to a local authority of the need to provide financial support to maintain service provision. It would be possible to provide a local authority with a clear picture of the social benefits of the service, against the costs, to allow them to undertake their own cost-benefit analysis – it would give them a clear case to present to their stakeholders too.

By undertaking regular profitability analysis, trending analysis should prove to be useful when it comes to capital expenditure decisions. The data will help to make the case for particular vehicle capacities, and, potentially, the fuel type (gas, electric, hydrogen) or even manufacturer to use.

Pitfalls

Clearly there are many variables when undertaking route profitability analysis. For instance, how should revenue for period tickets collected off bus be distributed across the network, or what is the fairest way of distributing engineering labour costs? There is no definitive answer, but consistent, reasonable, models can be devised to manage this by taking some of the characteristics from the routes, for example, the average fares, PVR and vehicle types used. Be careful, over-simplification can lead to the wrong conclusions.  For example, concessionary fares reimbursement could be apportioned on the basis of concessionary passengers numbers. But a totally different perspective would be obtained if the apportionment also reflected the average fares by route. Clearly, decisions based on the performance of a route alone could have unintended knock-on effects elsewhere on the network. However, having the data to hand allows operators to take a much more targeted, efficient, approach to network reviews.

It is important to ensure that regular route profitability analysis is afforded the importance it deserves; with actions identified and driven through.

How we can help

We have well-established software to facilitate the regular analysis of route profitability, simplifying the process for operators and providing them with the data they need to inform important decisions regarding their network. The software can also be utilised by our experienced consultancy team to help operators undertake detailed analysis and make sense of their data.

The EPM Insights solution empowers you with actionable Management Information on your network performance, supporting you to react to both the changing nature of reality during the Covid pandemic and to help shape your future network. Read more about Insights.

Name three words you would use to describe your role

Leadership, interesting, team-builder

Where did you work prior to joining EPM?

BigHand – a legal software business

What is your biggest achievement to date?

Professionally – leading the Capita SIMS business for 8 years, during which time we increased our market share to over 80% through delivering quality products and services.

Personally – bringing up two teenagers

Are you working on any interesting projects at the moment?

I have been with the business for 12 months now, and we are making lots of changes, so plenty of interesting things are happening.

The most interesting projects are about expanding the business both through introducing new products, such as Insight; and acquiring other businesses – we acquired Omnibus Solutions last week.

Do you have a favourite film?

Shrek! – I love its dry humour. I am a big fan of anything from Pixar.

What’s your favourite album?

U2 – Rattle and Hum. I bought it on the day it was released from the local record shop in St Austell in 1988.

What’s the best and worst things you’ve eaten?

As a family we all like food, and regularly cook new things. It is great having 4 cooks in the house! So the best is very difficult. The worst would be a continual diet of rice and Dal Bhat for three weeks whilst trekking in Nepal.

Favourite holiday destination?

This is a difficult one, I love to travel and have a long bucket list. If I have to choose one, it would be Bolivia, which was my first holiday with my wife.

Do you have any hobbies you like to do outside of work?

Photography. I’m also quite active, so I like to ski and cycle as well.

What’s a secret talent that no one knows about?

I can ski off-piste, although my children would say I am not very good at it. Off-piste skiing is skiing in the backcountry, on ungroomed and unmarked terrain.

If you could get a new skill in 10 minutes, what would it be?

I’d like to be able to play the piano

How do you think the industry will change in 10 years?

I think there will be a number of changes over the next ten years. Firstly, the consumer will expect a seamless and integrated transport experience whereby they only have to purchase one ticket for the entirety of their journey. There will also be an increased demand for public transport in general, as climate change gets increasing focus resulting in barriers to the use of cars, particularly in urban areas.

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who’s just started their career?

Push yourself outside your comfort zone and constantly seek to take on more responsibility so you’re always learning new things. Most importantly, believe in yourself and believe that you can do it!

18 Feb 2021 – EPM Bus Solutions has today, with the support of Literacy Capital, completed the acquisition of one of the UK’s leading passenger transport software businesses, Omnibus.

The strategic acquisition sees EPM further strengthen its capability in providing high quality software solutions across the bus operator and transport authority markets, focussed on improving operational and commercial performance.

Founded in 1990, by Peter and Carol Crichton, Omnibus provides software for passenger transport scheduling, staff rostering, depot allocation and timetable construction to a wide range of public transport operators and local authorities, with solutions being used across the UK and overseas.

EPM Bus Solutions, formed in 1986, provide software to help bus operators and transport authorities reduce operational costs, improve financial performance and better serve their customers. In addition, EPM are the UK’s leading BSOG auditor and concessionary reimbursement consultancy.

Ian Churchill, CEO at EPM Bus Solutions, said: “Omnibus’ software solutions perfectly complements EPM’s, and the acquisition will enable us to provide a higher quality service to existing clients and give a wider offering of solutions to new customers. By bringing together the two businesses we will be able to harness the domain knowledge and experience of both to develop solutions to meet the needs of the public transport sector as society emerges from the impact of Covid-19.”

Peter Crichton, Managing Director at Omnibus, said: “I am very proud of the journey the Omnibus business has been on over the last three decades. Driven by the challenges faced by the pandemic, new technologies, and demand from bus operators and transport authorities for deeper insights into their operations to drive efficiency, EPM’s solutions combined with Omnibus’s will offer a powerful set of solutions which will be best-in-class. I am looking forward to working with the EPM team on this exciting journey.”

–END–

Omnibus: https://omnibus.solutions/

Press Contact:

EPM Bus Solutions
Harmi Sangha
07538 935 568
Harminder.sangha@epm-bus.com 

With EPM Insights you can easily and quickly manage your entire bus operations from a single online platform to improve business profitability and efficiency.

Join the webinar and see how we can drive your business forward.

• Date: Thursday 11th February 2021
• Time: 2-2.30pm

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.