Rail Industry Awards Ceremonies

[TheSeeker]

Following rail industry people on twitter is very interesting, drivers, engineers, station staff. You get to see things that the public wouldn't normally have access to.

One thing I notice is that there seem to be a lot of award ceremonies in the rail industry. Both for front line staff and equipment suppliers.

I work in telecommunications and there it is quite different. Companies and staff are usually glad to get to the end of contracts alive and there isn't much pride in showing off what went on (at least in my experience). Mind you it could be that I'm just a lowly engineer in the trenches.

Any thoughts? Do you have similar events in the domain you work in?

 

[ArchieWoodbine]

I've been to a couple of rail industry awards. My observations:

• Sometimes the deserving teams/companies win; often it just seems to go to whomever the judges have previously worked for & have connections.
• There's always enough free booze to float a battleship.
• It's usually just an excuse for networking and a right-royal-booze-up.

They're usually funded heavily by sponsorship or private companies, so I don't think they cost the tax-payer much if anything. Still, I reckon we could do without them.

 

[DaiGog]

Winning awards can be good for business and good PR, especially if it is something like 'Passenger TOC of the Year'. It can also be good for staff morale and inclusivity if the attendees at the ceremony aren't all senior managers.

 

[theironroad]

99% * of frontline staff have no involvementin these award ceremonies and are mainly the preserve of management patting each other on the back and a very small token representation of staff.

After the event last year? which attracted unwanted media attention due to the nature of the guest speaker and his views , I thought there was going to be an attempt on reining in these numerous rail awards guys.

* Not actually a provable statistic

 

[43096]

Other than events such as the "Golden Spanners" such ceremonies are usually totally laughable.

A good example from last night. This won an award: https://www.railmagazine.com/news/n...-system?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

This is new territory for me, never had a booked train on an advance ticket just disappear before.

Its happened to loads of people this year. I've

An outcome that would ensure we can make that 14:40 train at Glasgow so going on an earlier service would be preferable. Having booked advanced tickets and that a valid route is now given via Haymarket, I'm not sure how flexible Scotrail would be with this. (I would also be OK about getting a later departure from Glasgow to Euston, but that's on a separate advance ticket and again, not sure how flexible Virgin would be either).

This is new territory for me, never had a booked train on an advance ticket just disappear before.

I've been told that when it came up as a nomination, a murmur went round the room saying "It's a ladder". When it won, the place just fell about laughing.

That is why these events have such a bad reputation.

 

[Shortlands]

I've attended a number of these. They are basically an excuse for managerial p+ss up.

The awards re usually sponsored by one of the rail magazines and you pay for the number of tables you book. Perhaps I'm cynical but your company's chance of winning an award seems linked to the number of tables its booked

 

[Dr Hoo]

‘Posh’ black tie events are not my bag at all but I did attend the ACoRP Community Rail Awards once. Good to see that a lot of very genuine, down-to-earth people (largely volunteers) had their chance for recognition.

 

[jamesst]

I don't know anyone other than the senior management from our company that ever go to these (frequent) pointless freeloading nights. And they wonder why there's such a wedge between them and the actual front line staff...

 

[infobleep]

In the industry I work in, address and street gazetteers, and street naming and numbering, we have an awards ceremony. There is also performance and achievement certificates too.

The reason for this is to promote what we do as an industry nationally, as well as internally in our local authorities and also to encourage better address and street data, seeing as how important it is to the UK.

It is also an opportunity to network over 1 evening and day and to attend workshops relating to the work we do. At the last one there was a discussion on street naming and numbeeing law for example. It is funded by sponsors, who also have stands promoting their products.

At the rail industry awards, do they have workshops and similar things to this?