The achievement of National Express employee Charlotte Bindley has been recognised by her industry peers at the Rail Business Awards 2011. Charlotte of National Express East Anglia (NXEA) was named ‘Young Rail Professional of the Year’ at the prestigious awards ceremony held at the Hilton Hotel in London.
Charlotte (33) has risen rapidly through the ranks of the train operator to become head of their catering services. Charlotte has done much to engage her colleagues, gaining ‘Investors in People’ accreditation for her department, whilst setting up a range of initiatives such as employee forums, product reviews and regular charity fundraising days. Charlotte heads up all of the on-train catering, including the train operator’s in-house sandwich making operation – based at Norwich station, which provides all of the sandwiches available on NXEA’s Norwich to London intercity train services.
Andrew Goodrum National Express East Anglia’s Customer Services Director said:
“Everyone at National Express is proud of Charlotte and her achievement in being named Young Rail Professional of the Year. She is a credit to the business and I am delighted that she has received national recognition for her outstanding work.”
It was a good night all round for National Express at the awards. National Express dominated the young professional category with all three entrants reaching the final. The two runners up, who were Highly Commended in the Young Professional of the Year award, were both from sister company c2c – Andrew Monk, Performance Delivery Manager and Slavina Nikolova, Route Engineer.
NXEA was also a runner up in two other awards:
• Rolling Stock Excellence for the Remote Train Monitoring system which has improved the performance of NXEA’s Class 90s and mk 3 carriages used on the Norwich – London intercity services.
• Environmental Innovation for NXEA’s comprehensive approach to environmental management – including initiatives such as eco-driving, traction energy reduction, recycling schemes and the carbon neutral stations scheme on the Bittern Line (between Norwich and Sheringham).
• National Express train operator c2c was a finalist in the Train Operator of the Year award.
Andrew Chivers Managing Director National Express Trains said:
“I’d like to congratulate our teams at NXEA and c2c for the hard work and commitment which has led to this success at the Rail Business Awards. All in all, it was a very successful evening for National Express, which demonstrated some of the real achievements of both NXEA and c2c.”
The Rail Business Awards are run in association with respected rail industry journal Rail Professional; the awards publicly acknowledge best practice in the rail industry and are judged by a panel of rail industry experts. The awards ceremony was held in London on 17 February 2011.
Congratulations to Charlotte. Good to see National Express East Anglia patting themselves on the back. They wouldn’t win any awards if they were voted for by commuters would they.