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Awards for MTR depot team and AGA lifesaver

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MTR Crossrail’s maintenance team were recognised with the Depot Team of the Year award for their contribution to the service’s fast-improving reliability and satisfaction scores.

Within just three months of being set up, the maintenance team had implemented new maintenance management software and procedures in ready for the launch of TfL Rail services between Liverpool Street and Shenfield in May 2015. They’ve also overseen a full fleet refreshment programme which has helped double the reliability of the fleet.

Says team member Tetyana Nedilko, ‘We’ve been working really hard to achieve this to get where we are.’

Adding, ‘We have a great team looking after our fleet, working together with Abellio Greater Anglia, and they’re awesome. Thanks for their efforts and we also have a great team in engineering at HQ who were all amazing. Thanks for all your hard work.’

Seaton Rail is the proud sponsor of Depot Team of the Year for 2016. Set up in 1995, Seaton Rail is managed by father-and-son team Shane and Matthew Seaton. Seaton Rail, which is based in Bridlington, specialises in possession and works planning. In 2008, the company also began offering contingent labour supply, training and on-track protection and warning services.

Seaton Rail, an approved Rail Training Accreditation Scheme provider (RTAS) through the National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR), is also a member of the Association of Railway Training Providers (ARTP) and the British Safety Council.

Shane Seaton, managing director of Seaton Rail said the MTR maintenance team were ‘well deserved winners’ and that he’d found it nice ‘to meet up with some old colleagues’ on the night.

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MTR Crossrail Maintenance Team.

Depot Team of the Year was followed by the Samaritans Lifesaver award, which this year was won by Scott Paton – a performance manager for Abellio Greater Anglia (AGA) who performed a life-saving intervention during a routine station visit.

‘It’s an absolute privilege to be recognised but I feel like all the nominees were deserving of this,’ said Scott, who doesn’t believe he would have had the confidence to intervene were it not for the training he had received from the Network Rail/ Samaritans partnership.

The award is sponsored by Samaritans, which in 2010 joined forces with Network Rail to run a rail suicide prevention programme. In the past three years, the programme has received information about more than 2,000 recorded suicide interventions by railway staff and British Transport Police (BTP) officers. Samaritans has seen the number of interventions rise by 30 per cent in the last year.

He went on. ‘It’s nice to be recognised by judges, peers, everyone, and it just proves that this is not just about me it’s about the Managing Suicidal Contacts course and what the Samaritans do as well.’

The programme’s Managing Suicidal Contacts training aims to give staff the skills and confidence to identify vulnerable people and act. To date, more than 11,500 railway staff have completed the course. The charity also runs trauma support courses for train drivers and other staff who have been affected by a suicide. More than 1,500 people have attended one of these courses to date.

Says Ola Rzepczynska, strategic programme manager, Network Rail, ‘It’s absolutely inspiring. It’s above and beyond a day job.

‘For most of us, we don’t go into our daily job thinking that something like this, someone taking their life, might actually happen… but unfortunately on the railway it is, so giving people the skills to be able to cope with that is hopefully making that difference and we believe at Samaritans that suicides can be preventable and as does the suicide prevention programme that we’re all part of.’

DEPOT TEAM OF THE YEAR HIGHLY COMMENDED

  • Bristol Traincrew Depot, Great Western Railway
  • Fatality Cleaning Team Streatham Hill, Southern

SAMARITANS LIFESAVER AWARD

  • Andrew Reid, Great Western Railway
  • Lee Klingenspor, Land Sheriffs

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