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26 May 2015, by Informa Insights
At the Rail Safety 2015 Conference in Melbourne, Public Transport Victoria (PTV) CEO Mark Wild talked about the different challenges of his role as the head of PTV and the plans and strategies he has laid out to resolve these. He highlighted the vital elements behind safety culture improvements and how every member of the organisation can help in achieving these goals and the significant in the state’s transport system.
Leading the pack
When Ian Dobbs appointed Mark Wild as his successor for the chief executive officer seat, he was all praises for the world-renowned leader in the transportation and infrastructure industry. Mr. Dobbs was confident that the passion and dedication Mr. Wild would be bringing with him to Public Transport Victoria would serve as a great asset not only to the organisation but to the entire public transport system of Victoria.
Mr. Wild explained how even before the appointment, he was set to build on the substantial success PTV had established over the past two years of its existence. And while he had a very high regard for his predecessor’s intelligent strategies of building various organisations into one cohesive force, Mark remained keen to establish an equally innovative vision, mission, and purposes for the company under his leadership.
Mark saw the urgent need of establishing a vision and mission that was enduring—one that would outlast the never-ending wave of governmental changes, one that would see through the leadership of many more CEOs, and one that would stay to help guide all operators, customers, and everyone involved in the transportation sector.
Mark acknowledged that in initially attempting to lay out his plans, he needed to give more emphasis to transforming the customer’s experience through knowledge, education, partnerships and innovation – so that every customer was well aware of the relevant developments in the system. He firmly reassured everyone how PTV would make it a point to live up to the community’s expectations and ensure that the integration will be conducted in a safe manner.
Transforming customer experience
One of the highlights of the talk was the pressing need for Public Transport Victoria and its leaders to understand their responsibilities in terms of establishing safety in the industry.
Mark was unyielding in his commitment to encouraging greater pressure and tension in the operations by continuously finding means to improve on their products and service delivery that is all tantamount to leading the organisation with great efficiency and eventually translate to excellence.
A competent partnership with VicTrack, the department, VicRoads, and the transport operators is also a vital part in the process of transforming customer experience. The PTV executive explained the need to accept the fact that indeed there is a consequential linkage to the safety of their customers and the drivers and all the people working there. Mark likewise emphasised the need for the PTV group to be unbending when it comes to living up to the Transport Integration Act with safety and culture behaviors of the jurisdiction being a vital part of their development processes.
Having been bombarded with the challenge of reducing the burden on the expenditures that is currently recorded at 2.7 billion dollars a year, the PTV head suggested that preserving the absolute integrity of the system can be completely sustainable if it is able to redesign the PTV structure with the following processes in mind: designing the product, delivering the product, operating the franchise, and selling in the channels. It should also be noted that in all these processes, safety should be essentially intrinsic in all of the value chain.
Breaking barriers
Mark Wild, who was director of Projects and Technical Services for Public Transport Victoria before he was finally appointed as the organisation’s CEO, spoke at the Rail Safety 2015 Conference in Langham, Melbourne, about accepting the challenge of establishing safety first above all across a sustainable network and how a cultural approach would be more appropriate than a procedural change.
Mr. Wild pointed out that for PTV and its leaders to be perpetually thinking of a culture of safety, they will first need to think holistically as an authority and not just one up in the ivory tower wherein decisions made must be sustained all the way through the value chain and all the way through the delivery.
The PTV head stressed the significance of the organisation and its leaders to have a complete and comprehensive understanding of all the safety responsibilities in their aim to transform the network through the eyes of their customers—with safety being the bloodstream for this transformation.
Mark concluded his Rail Safety 2015 presentation with a powerful thought of PTV’s mission and vision of transforming their customer experience and making it enduring through safety cultures and behaviors. And while the said cultural journey of PTV is going to be rough and long, the PTV CEO was firm enough to make his full commitment to the challenge.
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Public Transport Victoria CEO Mark Wild boasts of more than a decade’s experience across an extensive range of project and engineering management and substantial expertise in strategic business planning as well as noteworthy leadership proficiency over various executive management positions. To know more about Mark Wild and Public Transport Victoria, please visit their website.
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