National Rail Enquiries was named the Interfleet Technology Business of the Year at the 2010 Rail Business Awards.
It was a good night for National Rail Enquiries which, apart from winning the top prize, also went home with the Supplier Excellence Award for its Real Time Journey Planner.
Chairman of the judges and chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Steve Agg, said: “It is important that every business should strive to deliver the best possible service to its customers and healthy competition is a significant stimulus for innovation and improving standards.
“The recognition of excellence that these awards represent encourages business and brings opportunity to reward individual endeavour and service achievement for the benefit of all staff and customers.”
Over 650 senior figures from the UK’s rail industry attended the event at the London Hilton, Park Lane to see National Rail Enquiries pick up the highest award of the evening, which is given by the judges to the company who has performed the best across all of the award categories.
Hosted by Phil Hammond, a doctor, writer, broadcaster, noted comedian and commentator, the awards recognise excellence within the rail industry, with individual categories for train operator, supplier, station excellence, marketing, freight and engineering.
A new category for the 2010 Awards was the Electro Motive Railfreight Engineer of the Future, which was created to reward young engineers making a valuable contribution through mechanical or electrical engineering projects within the Railfreight sector. Dean Duthie of DB Schenker Rail (UK) was presented with the inaugural award and will also be eligible to attend an all-expenses paid, specialist training place with Electro Motive in Chicago.
London Midland had cause to celebrate as it picked up the Marketing Campaign of the Year Award for its ‘The Great Escape’ campaign, having also won the award the previous year. Other second time winners were Atkins who won the Safety and Security Excellence Award, as it did in 2008, and Northern Rail who was named Train Operator of the Year having also won the prize in 2007.
Nexus was another company who did extremely well taking home the award for the best PR campaign and winning the Station Excellence Award for its Haymarket Hub station.
Other wins came for freight haulier GB Railfreight which took the Railfreight Excellence of the Year award; British Transport Police was picked for the Internal Communications Excellence Award and Serco TCS Rail achieved the award for Engineering Excellence.
Steve Scrimshaw (pictured), managing director of rolling stock, Siemens Mobility won the much coveted Rail Business Manager of the Year award for playing a key leadership role in securing a contract for Siemens to supply high speed trains to Eurostar for use through the Channel Tunnel.
Paul Lawson, partner at Woodhouse Communications, who organises the awards said: “Once again we’ve received many high quality entries from organisations throughout the industry. The evidence we see as organisers is that the business ethic within rail companies is alive and kicking.
“Competition coupled with customer, stakeholder and shareholder demands has raised the bar for every organisation associated with the business of railways – and it’s clear that many organisations are more than meeting those demands.”
