A green square starts to burn on one of Lars Gruters’ many screens. A problem at Schiphol station, the rail map of the Netherlands shows. Gruters clicks on the green square. “An escalator at Schiphol station is standing still. No electricity. That has now been reported.”
A light blue flag at Roosendaal station does not cause panic at Gruters either. “No power on the overhead lines. This can be work, but also a malfunction. The situation is under control.”
Gruters is one of the 27 employees of the Operational Control System Infra (OBI). From two half-lit rooms in the office of rail manager ProRail in Utrecht they supervise the railways throughout the Netherlands. The OBI operates and monitors all overhead lines, the energy supply and the tunnels.
For example, two screens show all eighteen railway tunnels in the Netherlands. If there is a problem there, such as smoke in the tunnel, the OBI switches off the power, opens the security doors so that passengers can be evacuated and informs the emergency services. A tree on the overhead line? Running out of work? Simply put, the OBI has its hand on the track’s light switch.
This responsibility makes the small ProRail department one of the weakest links in the Dutch rail network. The OBI has so many vacancies that the department is almost unable to complete the rosters. One sick colleague and train traffic is at a standstill throughout the Netherlands.
“The rack is out,” says OBI manager Delaila de Lima. With seven vacancies for 27 colleagues (26 men and one woman), it is becoming increasingly difficult for her to arrange the rosters. De Lima has to schedule four employees per shift. Two for the Northern Netherlands, including the busy tracks around Amsterdam and Utrecht, one for the Southern Netherlands, and one for the high-speed train. “Sometimes I am forced to schedule one or two people less. Then there should not be a major incident, such as in September in Swifterbant, when there are two people. Then the train traffic will come to a standstill.”
Three or four times in the past year, it was very close to stopping train traffic, says De Lima. “I called a colleague at the campsite if he was coming to work. Luckily he did. Later I sent his wife a bunch of flowers.” She also temporarily heads another department within ProRail.
Manual
Now Dutch train transport squeaks and creaks in many more places. There is a shortage of employees, the workload is high and absenteeism is high. NS is looking for hundreds of conductors and drivers. And travelers notice this due to canceled and delayed trains, even though NS canceled trains to keep the timetable “predictable”.
ProRail has long had a shortage of train traffic controllers who supervise train journeys throughout the Netherlands. No trains without a traffic controller, travelers in the Central Netherlands have noticed several times in recent years.
Read also: ProRail to cabinet: ‘Prevent even more crowds, make sharp choices now’
At the moment, the classes for train traffic controllers are now quite full, says Reinalde Riezebos of ProRail. “But it turns out to be very difficult for the OBI to find people.” From the personnel department, she leads the search for new OBI employees.
One reason these vacancies are difficult to fill is the required prior education. ProRail is looking for people with MBO-4 electrical engineering. “They are so popular that someone who sticks his head out of the window and shouts that he wants something else immediately receives dozens of offers,” says Riezebos. “The more technical the position, the more difficult it is to fulfill.” ProRail has a total of approximately 250 vacancies for five thousand employees.
Another stumbling block for some applicants: the OBI runs continuous shifts, early, late and night. The work between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. is especially hard. Then the OBI supervises the night-time work on the track. Lars Gruters: “Sometimes you get an impatient contractor on the phone who says he has twenty people ready to get started, but then I can’t get the power from the overhead wires for whatever reason.”
However, Gruters also sees an advantage in his night shifts. “Now I am regularly free during the day. Then I can take my children to school. When I was outside for a contractor I worked sixty to eighty hours. I saw my children very little.”
We fish in a small pond, says Reinalde Riezebos of Human Resources. “We have agreed that we will not recruit among our contractors. That only moves the staff shortage.” Applicants sometimes drop out because they do not want to travel to Utrecht, says Riezebos.
In 2014, ProRail brought the four regional OBIs in Amsterdam, Zwolle, Eindhoven and Rotterdam into one central department. A computer system that was supposed to automate part of the work is still not working properly. For example, OBI employees still have to manually prepare work orders for contractors working on the track.
Havoc
The work is 99 percent relaxed, says Gruters, and 1 percent is very stressful. For example, on September 2. Due to, among other things, a short circuit, a TenneT high-voltage cable ended up on the overhead line of the railway at Swifterbant, in Flevoland. All cables and switches burned through, smoke came out of the ground.
Gruters was at work at the time. “Panic on the track from Amsterdam to Zwolle. I received three thousand malfunction reports in one second.” He shows the picture of his screen that he texted to colleagues. Pink, green and light blue notifications everywhere. After an initial short analysis, Gruters switched off the power.
The damage was so great that all cables, signals, cabinets and overhead lines had to be replaced over a length of 7 kilometers. Until December 11, no trains ran between Lelystad and Dronten. According to TenneT, the high-voltage grid will not be fully repaired until the end of next year. The work will cost around 10 million euros. The company cannot yet say how much damage ProRail has suffered.
Loyalty
The employees of the OBI say that they now finally have the feeling that the management of ProRail realizes how vulnerable the department – and therefore train traffic throughout the Netherlands – actually is.
“The basis is narrow,” says responsible board member Timo Idema. “Fortunately, there has never been an incident, but we recognize that the situation is fragile. We want to do everything we can to get the team back to strength. The occupancy really needs to increase.”
Idema praises the good morale within the OBI and the loyalty of the employees. When asked whether ProRail will also pay the OBI employees more to alleviate the staff shortage, he is still unable to say much. “We will do what is necessary and certainly also look at the terms of employment. We do try to prevent an adjustment of the employment conditions here leading to unrest elsewhere in the company or the sector.”
A version of this article also appeared in the December 24, 2022 newspaper
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