The LNER Encyclopedia

Jarvis goes bust.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8586663.stm

Not a very good company, I just hope that the work force come through this OK.

Am I glad I jumped ship last year.
The firm may not have that brilliant but you have to remember that a lot of the staff were like me TUPE'D over via about 6 companies from BR days.
I started in RRNE days in 90 but some staff were pushing 40 years when I left.

my brother works as a manager with jarvis. after talking to him earlier they are hoping to sell what they can as a going concern.

I was TUPEed into Balfour Beatty power networks myself just before I retired and its not a pleasant experience as far as working practices and H&S are concerned.
When interviewed as to what my ambitions were within the B.B.P.N.organisation were my reply was "to retire at the first opportunity" which I did 12 months later despite every effort to stop me doing so.

I had a similar experience moving from GTRM/Carillion to Notwork Fail. I also said I would like to go but Notwork Fail asked me to cover a vacancy on a temporary basis, stupidly I agreed. Human Remains department were appalling and did nothing to release me until I got fed up and said here is 4 weeks notice (I had nothing to lose), good bye!

redtoon1892 wrote:Jarvis goes bust.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8586663.stm

How discrete of the BBC not to mention dates and places like 17 October 2000, Hatfield or 10 May 2002, Potters Bar. The Jarvis name came well to the fore in those events, especially when Jarvis tried to deny the inadequacy of its maintenance work by claiming vandalism at Potters Bar and it was also found the maintenance logs there contained fictious entries claiming work had been done on the track when it hadn't.

As for 'Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT union, which represents rail workers, described the news as "another hammer blow for the rail industry" and blamed "Network Rail's cuts programme and the scrapping of essential renewals work" for Jarvis's collapse.' I am lost for words

Jarvis was able to survlve with Railtrack's 'If it ain't bust don't mend it' slap-happy way of dealing with track renewals (culminating in Hatfield) and although I don't have the exact figures to hand I believe there is more renewals work going on now than Railtrack would ever have contemplated; they preferred to use derailments to tell them the state of the track rather than close inspection by experienced PW staff.

I think the truth of the matter is that the Jarvis wasn't securing contracts because of its appalling record. Would you let a contract to a firm, even if they were the cheapest bidder, if there was the additional cost of a high speed derailment caused by bodged work on the track at the back of your mind? I wouldn't.

In reply to Mr Bunt
From the viewpoint of somebody who has worked on the track and in the office for Jarvis.
But I took voluntary severance a year ago so I have no connection or reason to defend the firm as a whole. But I will take a stance aginst anyone trying to besmirch the name of the lads that I worked with.
I can quite categorically state that we never ever bodged a renewal job or treated anything we did in a "Slap Happy " manner.

Too give a potted history of the staff on the ground it should be remembered that at privatisation Renewals and Maintenance staff were split apart and allocated to BRIS and later on to either Railtrack Maintenance or to a Track Renewal unit (Northern Track or Eastern Track)
The renewal side was later sold with Eastern taking over Northern and becoming Fastline.
Fastline was later taken over by Jarvis, but the guys on the ground were still the same as pre privatisation.
The maintenance side of Railtrack was taken over by Jarvis as well but the two sides remained separate even if based in the same depot having different management and reporting structures.
What went on with Maintenance and the outside works company Jarvis Facilities has no bearing at all on the renewal side of the company. But we were all tarred with the same brush.
In reality the guys on the ground in both sides are, largely, the same guys who have been doing the same job for the last 20 - 30 years.
The only changes are that management has come and gone making an awful lot of money in some cases, the van colours have changed over and over again.
Yet Bill and Fred are still patrolling the same length of track that they have patrolled for the last 20 years.
Yet it is the maintenance side of things that has had the incidents and these are the same staff that are employed by Network Rail.
Greyrigg on the WCML would also come under this I suppose.

A few years ago a maintenance supervisor for Railtrack reported a fence as being in dire condition and slagged off Jarvis for allowing the fence to get into the condition it was in.
What wasn't said was that the fence had been reported like that for the last 15 years.
The responsible supervisor for that area at the time was himself.

Mr Bunt you accuse Jarvis of being involved in Hatfield.
You might want to check your facts there. Railtrack was resposible for that.
Check the court proceedings.
Jarvis Renewals was waiting for the go ahead to do the rerailing, but Railtrack continually postponed the requested possessions to do the work.

Mr Bunt. I personnally think that you are one of the numerous Jarvis bashers that jumped on the Anti Jarvis bandwagon hyped up by sensationalist press reports.
Take a look at the photo below.
Did you see anything of this in the press?
If it had of been a Jarvis site how much press coverage would it have got?
It shut Paddington for 4 days.
How much coverage did it get? I saw 1 item about 2 inches of column on an inside page in the Telegraph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash

Bad news from the administrators, 1100 redundancies. So that means 1100 men who used to look after our railways are leaving it to who? Time to dust off the bus timetables.

As I keep saying 52A , "less fuss by bus" !!!

Mr B .. "One for the road!"

Don't know if you noticed but the one bit of Jarvis that may be saved Facilities Management is one of the bits that got the bad name initially with the schools contracts.
Looks like all the Renewals offices now gone, including my old office at Holbeck.

How long before we see an upturn in the amount of TSR's? Due to renewal work being cancelled / postponed.
Near York Haxby - Strensall on the Down was deferred over New Year for about the 4th time.
That time may have been due to weather conditions but its still 2 hole plated joints on 1931 Bullhead. Running at 80.