The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) operate the trains, trams and buses for the city and surrounding area of Toronto. They are Canada's largest transit agency, and faced the challenge of new regulatory oversight coupled with new funding mechanisms.
This demanded a quick response with a high-quality regulatory submission, a stronger and better justified business plan and a major capability transformation programme.
The immediate need was to respond to the first regulatory submissions. The next priority was to start the transformation to be able to meet the next year’s regulatory requirements, which would become more demanding. The challenge was that the awareness of the regulations and asset management were very low across the organisation. As such, TTC decided that they required international specialist to help them with these problems.
We partnered with TTC to bring industry best practices and innovative solutions to radically transform the organisation and to meet the regulatory challenges. We, firstly, initiated a comprehensive capability assessment against various industry standards, including ISO 55001, GFMAM, FEDM, AMMA, and a bespoke rail standard (R3MP). In parallel, an awareness, training and senior management coaching campaign was started, targeting all key managers and technical leads.
This was followed with a comprehensive, 3-year, transformation roadmap with a supporting business case, which was subsequently presented and approved by the Board. The Board also approved the newly designed organisational structure, business process and the establishment of the transformation programme.
At the same time as the transformation was being established, we prepared the first regulatory submission, which was duly approved and submitted.
We implemented the transformation programme, defining the structure, PMO processes, and the terms of reference, charter, policies etc. We also provided technical support across most of the transformation workstreams. We mapped the business processes, designed the new organisation, and implemented the first organisational asset hierarchy.
We also started the process of planning for the second regulatory funding cycle with a new process, clear responsibilities, a new condition, risk and performance approach, that were all supported by the extensive training and coaching campaign.
The outcome was significant. TTC was one of only a few organisations to achieve regulatory compliance with the first submissions. They had simultaneously established a clear strategic direction, and raised awareness across the organisation of the changing environment.
By starting to embrace industry best practices, TTC positioned itself as a leader in asset management within the Canadian transit sector, influencing the Municipality and Metrolink.
