Tube vision to bridge the gap

A stint on the world's largest man-made river project will help Tube Lines' CIO understand the business

With a career that has spanned coke oven building at Scotland’s Ravenscraig steelworks and work on the world’s largest man-made river project, John Connolly brings a variety of experience to the challenging environment of London’s underground rail network.

After four years at Thames and American Water, Connolly started last month as director of information for Tube Lines, which runs the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines.

The role includes the management of the organisation’s internal IT, and responsibility for upgrading technology and business practices to support the three lines, used by 40 per cent of London’s underground travellers.

Connolly’s first introduction to the potential of IT was while working for engineering firm Brown and Root in the 1980s.

“The offshore workers were incredibly sophisticated in their use of 3D computer-aided design (Cad), using the technology for what used to be done with pen and ink,” said Connolly.

“At the time, it was heavy-weight use of IT for engineering purposes ­ using Cad to construct a dimensionally accurate representation of whatever they wanted to build.”

While he describes himself as being “far from a wire-head”, Connolly admits that his introduction to Cad revealed a new way of using technology to improve working practices.

The approach will be key as Tube Lines sets out to build on the 2004 Excalibur programme, which replaced the legacy systems inherited from London Underground.

The first priority is a desktop PC refresh, including an operating system upgrade to Windows Vista. In the longer term, Connolly is keen to explore next-generation tools such as collaborative work platforms.

“We have recently been through a period of consolidation and stabilisation, and now we are looking to move forward,” he said.

“The possibilities for improving workflow and document management are very exciting and we are trying to advance the idea of self-service around the organisation.”

Forward planning is increasingly important, in Connolly’s view, because consumer technology has created a new set of challenges for employers.

“People’s expectations about what they find at work are increasingly being set by what they have at home,” he said.

“A decade ago businesses had to worry about not getting too far ahead of their employees.

“But there is an interesting reversal because now they have to ensure they don’t fall too far behind.”

The business technology market can learn important lessons from its consumer equivalent. Companies invest millions of pounds in training their staff, but fail to look at why consumers find it so easy to use Web 2.0 sites such as eBay.

“I visited a commercial web site yesterday to buy something and my email address and other details were automatically populated from a cookie file on my computer,” said Connolly.

“The systems you find in the average business have a specific user log-on, yet whenever you try to do something the first thing they ask is: who are you?

“If Amazon and eBay put their services in the face of the public in the same way that most companies put their internal applications in the face of their users, they would never have succeeded.”

But getting the right tools is only half the battle in a complicated environment such as the capital’s underground system.

Tube Lines employs more than 3,500 staff scattered across hundreds of sites and disciplines. Connolly hopes that his wide-ranging career history will help him to communicate with the varied workforce.

In the 1980s, before a stint at consultancies KPMG and Atos Origin, Connolly was chief engineer on Libya’s Great Man-made River project ­ one of the largest engineering tasks ever undertaken.

“You could drive for 10 hours at 60 miles per hour and still not leave the construction site,” he said.

While working for Tube Lines presents its own challenges, past experience should help provide a balanced perspective, said Connolly.

“When I sit in on a meeting about the building of a station or the refurbishing of a piece of track, I’m not in the least uncomfortable with what the engineering teams talk about,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to lawyers or engineers or communications people, they all describe the world slightly differently. Learning other people’s language is a key part of understanding what you are both trying to achieve.”

Career highlights

*Graduated with a Master’s degree from Cranfield School of Management.

*Engineer with Brown and Root and the Libyan Great Man-made River, 1986-2000.

*KPMG and Atos Origin Consulting, specialising in shared services and business process, 2000-2003.

*Divisional CIO for Thames and American Water, 2003-2006.

*Director of information for Tube Lines, October 2007.