Facilitating railway collaboration in the Northwest

We recently facilitated a Facilitator Network Meeting for TransPennine Express and TransPennine Route Upgrade partners, Network Rail, Northern and Rail North Partnership. The half-day event brought together Facilitators who completed the programme in 2022 and 2023 with the aim of sharing experiences and challenges, providing a refresher on particular topics with the added immeasurable benefits of getting together face-to-face.

Since completing the Facilitator Development Programme, participants have facilitated Project Kick-Starts, a variety of meetings and Lessons Learned working collaboratively cross organisationally. As UIC trained Facilitators they have a suite of Tools and Techniques to ensure events are well-planned, productive, and with clear outcomes. The feedback they have received from those they have facilitated has been very positive with an emphasis on the improved efficiency and effectiveness this has brought, particularly to regular meetings.

Chris Nutton – Major Projects Director, Fiona Gilmartin – Head of the Integrated Programme Management Office and Denise Lennon – Head of Collaboration joined Facilitators for some Small Group Work around a particular real work challenge. In our final round of reflections, the following quote nicely summed up the benefits of Facilitators:

“Utilising Facilitators really helps to solve problems, but they also improve the culture within an individual organisation and when working collaboratively with other organisations”.

It was great to catch up with the Facilitators and hear what events they had facilitated, reflect on areas they could improve on, and share ideas that benefitted everyone.