This is another example of the "generalist" approach to management of rail that led to the collapse of Tranzrail in the first place - the idea that all you need is a good manager to lead the organisation, regardless of their lack of knowledge of the sector. Rail is a highly specialised field, and no matter how competent Jim Quinn is he will be unable to give it the specialist knowledge that is needed to lead its recovery as a viable transport option for New Zealand. William Peet will be in great demand in Australia - best of luck to him.

I am surprised that NBR found industry insiders surpised at this news and one must wonder whether the industry insiders consulted worked for Ontrack or any of the consultants or contractors that work in rail in New Zealand (the general held belief outside of Ontrack's own staff is that the organisation is disfunctional and is staffed by people who have never worked on a functioning and profesionally opperated railway infrastructure system.)

I cannot comment on the suitability of the new CEO but a change had to be made, see the Auditor General's report into Ontrack of last year (where William Peet had been CEO for 4 years!)

Those referring to the Auditor General's report should consider the impossible task faced by the Ontrack team in growing the business in a very short time from a workforce of a handful of people running property leases to a fully fledged maintenance, operations and construction group with a large workforce from disparate backgrounds, trying to meet near-impossible expectations from Government and the public. By the way, William Peet has been CEO for only a relatively short time, having inherited many of the organisation's problems from the monumentally inappropriate David George

Most of Ontrack's problems stem from the fact that their management team and workforce has hardly changed since it was re-nationalised - it is still being managed on a shoe-string team of people with no experience whatsoever of working outside of that environment. There are many experienced rail people in NZ, a lot from the UK and Australia with vast experience, but they pretty much all work for consultants and contractors as Ontrack is seen as a closed-shop and only promotes from within. Hence, many people at Ontrack have been promoted way beyond their ability and - more worryingly now that they are attempting to deliver major projects in Auckland and Wellington - have no experience of anything other than trying to keep the railway running on the smell of an oily rag during the dark years of practically zero funding under the provatisation debarcle.

Ontrack had not identified all the resources it needed or the constraints it faced in carrying out maintenance and renewal work. Ontrack documents reported that insufficient staff resources or a lack of time to access the tracks had made some planned maintenance and renewal work more difficult. This raises questions about Ontrack's ability to do all the work it needs to do to maintain and renew the rail network.

Ontrack was not keeping up with planned work, which in turn could create further work. Ontrack did not have an overview of the planned work, or the overall progress it was making against its planned work. Therefore, we could not determine whether Ontrack was close to keeping up with its planned work or whether the amount of overdue

Ontrack did not have all the information or systems it needed to prepare a long-term plan.

Until service levels are established and there is clear, accessible information about the state of the rail network, Ontrack will not be able to determine optimum strategies for managing the rail network or how much this will cost.

Managing day-to-day work on the rail networkOntrack planned maintenance and renewal work on a short-term, reactive basis using inspection results. The planning relied heavily on inspections to find problems before they could worsen or lead to failure. Similarly, Ontrack relied on decision-makers to accurately judge how quickly problems needed to be fixed.

I wonder if William Peet put all this on his cv when applied for the KiwiRail job?