SMRT 'did not skimp on budget'
Interim chief and chairman defend practices, spending on maintenance
By Christopher Tan, The Straits Times, 12 May 2012
SMRT CORP's two top men took the stand yesterday and held the line by defending the rail operator's maintenance spending and practices, a day after the Committee of Inquiry (COI) had grilled former chief executive Saw Phaik Hwa on the matter.
Both interim chief executive Tan Ek Kia and chairman Koh Yong Guan said SMRT's maintenance expenditure had kept pace with the increase in train runs over the last decade.
'SMRT did not skimp on maintenance expenditure,' said Mr Tan.
'We have increased train runs to accommodate an increase in ridership. How does expenditure keep up with this kind of trend?'
The interim CEO presented a chart plotting dollars 'per train kilometre' operated, which showed a relative flat line from 2003 to last year. This, he said, indicated that maintenance expenditure had kept pace with an increase in ridership.
Reiterating what Ms Saw said the day before, Mr Tan pointed out that there was a mistake in the maintenance figures quoted in the SMRT internal investigation team's report, which had been submitted to the COI.
'They used passenger-kilometre instead,' he said. 'Train-kilometre is more relevant.'
On Thursday, when asked to comment on the report, Ms Saw said 'that could be wrong numbers' or that there were 'errors in the parameters' in the report.
Mr Tan said he had already pointed this out to the team chairman, SMRT independent director Ong Ye Kung, and that 'he has acknowledged that'.
Cost per passenger-kilometre divides the maintenance expenditure by the number of people carried by the network over a period of time. Cost per train-kilometre divides it instead by distance covered by the trains.
Mr Tan, a chartered engineer formerly with oil giant Shell, said however that charting maintenance spending was not the only way of measuring a company's commitment to maintenance.
Both he and Mr Koh pledged that the rail operator would do more to improve the trains' reliability.
'Going forward, we will be doing trend analysis, root cause analysis. We mentioned all the change-outs to our train pneumatic systems, electronic cards, signalling system - all these will be significant capital expenditure,' Mr Tan said.
Other investments to bolster the reliability of the ageing rail system include changing the metal claws that hold the electrical 'third rail' in place, and buying new equipment.
Second Solicitor-General Lionel Yee, representing the Attorney-General's Office, went through with Mr Tan a list of recommendations made by the internal investigation team. They include:
- Closing sections of the network during off-peak days to carry out intensive maintenance work;
- Establishing a process of systemic failure identification;
- Encouraging ground-up feedback from frontline operations and maintenance staff;
- Shifting the Rail Incident Management Plan (which is activated when there is a major breakdown) from being operations-centric to commuter-centric;
- Conducting detailed contingency planning, and more detailed risk analysis to determine the most probable incidents and formulating plans for them;
- Establishing a full-time customer service department; and
- Improving communications with the public.Mr Tan said SMRT management would consider the recommendations carefully. On closing sections of the network for more intensive maintenance work, he said that it would be done in a way to minimise inconvenience to commuters.
The Inquiry's chairman, Chief District Judge Tan Siong Thye, at one point asked Mr Tan why SMRT did not do more to address the issue of the dropping 'third rail' claws, since it was something that had been happening for many years.
The interim chief replied: 'I really don't have a good explanation.
'I can only say that there were many other things that needed attention.'
Free train rides being considered
By Christopher Tan, The Straits Times, 12 May 2012
By Christopher Tan, The Straits Times, 12 May 2012
CHIEF District Judge Tan Siong Thye, who chairs the Committee of Inquiry into last December's rail disruptions, has finally got a positive response to a question he has been asking various witnesses this week.
The question: If free bus services can be provided during major rail disruptions, why can't free train rides on the still-working parts of the train network also be offered?
The answer, which came yesterday from Land Transport Authority (LTA) deputy director of bus and vocational licensing Josephine Tan: This is being looked into by the authority.
The LTA later confirmed with The Straits Times that it will work with public transport operators on a way to offer free train rides to commuters affected by a rail breakdown.
Mr Tan said that extending this free service to trains is 'not so much about giving freebies', but about solving the problem of a large number of people displaced by a rail incident - and the best way to dissipate this crowd is by rail.
Later in the day, when SMRT interim chief executive Tan Ek Kia took the stand, he said the company is also discussing with the LTA the possibility of tweaking the fare ticketing system to provide automatic refunds to affected passengers.
'They can get the refund by just coming in any time within two weeks...tapping their card... and the system will automatically refund them,' he said.
'That's a software development that we are still exploring with the LTA.'
SMRT to refocus on its engineers
Rail operator didn't give them enough attention: Chairman
By Christopher Tan, The Straits Times, 12 May 2012
Rail operator didn't give them enough attention: Chairman
By Christopher Tan, The Straits Times, 12 May 2012
SMRT Corp will be repositioned as an engineering company, its chairman Koh Yong Guan revealed yesterday.
Mr Koh said that he was not 'comfortable' that although the rail operator's core business was trains, not enough attention was given to its engineers.
To this end, the chairman said he has reviewed the salary scales of executives with engineering roles and invited a senior engineering vice-president to sit in at board meetings. He has also set up a 'trains board', comprising largely of engineers who will focus their attention on train operations and maintenance.
'At the board level the senior-most person who is responsible for the operation of the rail system was not directly there to answer to the board,' he said, explaining why he had asked SMRT Trains executive vice-president Khoo Hean Siang to sit in at board meetings.
Mr Koh said he needed to give 'appropriate remuneration' to the technical people 'who are running the business for us'. He said that as salaries are transparent in a listed company, it was also 'a signal' he wanted to send.
Another 'signal' was to promote Mr Khoo, the chairman said.
Mr Koh said this happened some time in March last year, when the position of chief operating officer, occupied by 'a non-technical person' (Mr Yeo Meng Hin, who has since left), 'was removed'.
In April, he proposed the setting up of a 'trains board'. This was to help the SMRT board oversee train matters, and to pay closer scrutiny to operational and maintenance issues, he said.
After going through legal and regulatory approval, the trains board was up in October last year.
Mr Koh chairs it, and members include SMRT's interim chief executive officer Tan Ek Kia; independent director Ong Ye Kung; and ex-Land Transport Authority deputy chief executive T. S. Low.
The chairman revealed these moves when he took the witness stand at the Committee of Inquiry yesterday.
Later, when inquiry panellist Professor Lim Mong King said SMRT might want to adopt a more proactive maintenance approach rather than a 'firefighting' one, Mr Koh concurred.
'I agree that as a system ages, maintenance must move more from repair and corrective maintenance to preventive maintenance or predictive maintenance,' he said. 'I think that is common sense. I do believe that SMRT is doing that... of course we can always do more.'
When asked by Prof Lim, from the Nanyang Technological University's School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, whether SMRT had in fact put enough emphasis on maintenance, Mr Koh said: 'When you look at our efforts and expenditures on maintenance, you should take a holistic view and take into account the life cycle of our system and equipment.
'We are at a phase where money has to be spent on upgrading and renewing systems, like our signalling system, and upgrading of our trains, so that we can avoid massive increases in maintenance.
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