These are challenging days for Catherine Doran. She is in charge of Network Rail’s IT assets and is facing growing pressure to keep down costs, but she remains unperturbed.

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) confirmed earlier this year that Network Rail will be given an overall budget next year of £28.5bn, £2.6bn less than it asked for. The company still has to respond to the ruling, while the ORR contends that the shortfall will actually amount to £1.2bn once some projects are dropped or delayed.

The announcement from the regulator followed months of wrangling with the rail infrastructure firm, which is understood to have said it could generate savings of about 13 per cent, considered “optimistic” by the ORR.

Despite the potential constraints on the horizon, Doran and her team are working at full power to support a five-year strategic business plan.

Her achievements since joining the company in June 2006 as director of information management have led to her role being expanded to that of corporate development director. The change in job title is a recognition of the role of technology in supporting the business, Doran says.

Whatever the outcome of the discussions with the regulator, the technology function will still be looking to get maximum value from all investments in IT to drive business change, says Doran, the winner of this year’s IT Leader of the Year prize at the Computing Awards for Excellence.

“I was privileged enough to be asked to take on that transformation, which will cost millions of pounds and will be a massive undertaking for the business. The challenges will be huge,” says Doran.

“We still have a couple of months to digest the news from the ORR, but at the crudest level, we are being asked to deliver better services to the public and reduce costs at the same time,” she says.

“The executive teams concluded that asking people to simply pedal harder would not deliver enough, so we had to look at the firm differently to deliver savings efficiently, and that includes looking at IT in a cross-functional, integrated way.”

In her new role, Doran reports directly to Network Rail’s chief executive and is a member of the company’s executive management group, which steers the organisation’s overall strategy.

In her previous role, Doran developed the IT team into a delivery-focused, business-minded unit. She believes IT must co-operate with different parts of the business, to understand their needs and develop appropriate solutions.

Satisfying conclusions

“By the nature of what we are doing here, it is essential that we work well as a team and build relationships. You need to have a detailed understanding of what the company is trying to do at a granular level to help deliver the overall agenda, and your job in IT is to have that on its way,” says Doran.

The same approach applies to external partners. A transformed vendor management plan has resulted in several key deals being rearranged and the number of companies providing services to Network Rail cut by nearly a third.

Doran believes that a greater focus on “multi-functional” partnerships can help improve service levels and cut costs. The uncertainty over funding means that all new IT projects are under scrutiny. Some have reached the design stage, while others continue to have business cases built for them. But the focus remains on delivering customer-facing projects, Doran says.

“We will use technology as a tool to deliver the infrastructure needed to offer the best service to our customers, and that means improved reliability, safety and consistency,” she says.

Key objectives for the coming year include improvements to the way the rail network operates and better communication with the public. For example, Doran is looking to introduce systems to improve the delivery of information to commuters in the event of unplanned engineering work, including suggesting alternative routes.

Other projects that are directly related to customer service include re-routing trains to minimise disruption in case of signal failures. Internally, there are plans to further streamline infrastructure delivery to detect vulnerabilities in the IT setup to minimise the impact and cost of maintenance.

Network Rail has a number of other pressing priorities, such as easing the bottlenecks around London Bridge station and the need for extra capacity around the East Coast line. The ORR has also demanded a 20 per cent decrease in the number of train cancellations and delays.

To that end, Doran’s strategic agenda will see increased co-operation with Network Rail’s chief engineer to deliver the new corporate network model to help the company gain a thorough view of the UK’s railway infrastructure. She is also charged with carrying out a business-wide strategy to establish an asset management plan.

Despite all the challenges that lie ahead, Doran remains positive and motivated. “It is deeply satisfying to achieve the completion of something extremely hard and have a great party afterwards. Personally, there would be no point in doing all this if it were too easy,” she says.