Railway Track & Structures - October 2007 - (Page 50)

TTCI Anniversary the site and our business and work with the FRA to make a better facility. At the same time, our business model says we’re going to balance the books. So it’s an ongoing, tricky problem. We’re a for-profit company, but we’re a notfor-dividend company, so our goal is to reinvest every penny back into the site or the organization. That’s going to be an ongoing issue, an ongoing headache for management of the site. We don’t complain about it because it’s simply a part of our basic business model and it’s why we exist. It does make us different from most organizations. RT&S: Where do you see TTCI going as you enter your second 25 years? R.A.: I’d like to talk about a technology road map we’re developing, the AAR, Railinc and TTCI. We’re about to run a first draft past the railroads. The concept is to look about 20 years in the future and say to ourselves, or the railroads would say to themselves, “What do we want in technology with the challenges facing us 20 years down the pike?” We’ll try to develop this road map as a business-driven exercise. There are some pretty heavy drivers out there, one of which is the continuing capacity crunch. If rail freight ton miles continue growing in basic steps with growth in GDP, we’re looking at somewhere between a 50 and 80 percent increase in freight ton miles to haul freight across this country even without any increase in market share. That’s happening on the highway side, as well. That’s a big challenge we think technology can play a major role in meeting. There are others, of course. We all know about the environmental protection, pressure for new regulation. Obviously, safety will always be of paramount importance. And, of course, from a railroad point of view, being able to get a good rate of return on investment of capital is vital. And there’s efficiency, productivity, all the usual challenges. We haven’t had the road map approved by railroads, but it’s a comprehensive document that is being presented to the operating officers and chief marketing officers. That will be a major document to guide how research will be done. www.rtands.com TTCI’s Annual Research Review draws about 300 visitors research program. Judging by the numbers, it seems to be highly successful. The efforts that go into putting the open house together occur in the previous 12 months with all the research that’s going on. Of course, there’s an awful lot of work in putting the slides and presentations together, logistics, transport, etc., making sure visitors don’t get lost out in the prairie. It’s almost self-advertising these days, mostly word of mouth. RT&S: What are some of the challenges you face at TTCI today? R.A.: On the engineering research side, we have relatively few problems in attracting people. We try to feed in on the top end and the bottom end on a regular basis to bring in new graduates into our industry and our research field. We’re always on the lookout for top talent, some of which comes from overseas such as Harry Tournay from South Africa and John Tunna from the U.K. They are senior, well-respected researchers. So we top up at that end. And, as I said, we work at the bottom end, as well. That creates the process of allowing the engineers to move up between those two boundaries. That seems to work quite well. One of our challenges here at the moment is because the railroads are hiring, which they haven’t done for a 50 Railway Track & Structures October 2007 number of years, so it’s becoming a bit more difficult to find good, qualified folks such as carmen, such as diesel electricians, that sort of person. What we’re looking at more and more now is to find people who don’t have railroad experience at this time, but who have basic education and training to basically home-grow our staff and, hopefully, in four or five years we’ll have some experienced carmen and diesel electricians. It’s a good problem because railroads are snapping them up, so from the big picture point of view, that’s a good problem. Along with everybody else, we do have a big slug of retirements coming at us. The Baby Boomers will be leaving in about five or six years, so we’ve started to plan for that eventuality. Many companies and railroads are already experiencing that. Our business model points out that our primary function is to do AAR research and provide technical support for the AAR standard-setting process. That’s our bread and butter. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t exist. But we need to do more than that in order to maintain the site. We have to market our services, both our testing and our analytical service and, of course, our training, in North America and overseas. We do that in order to bring enough revenue in so we can invest in http://www.rtands.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Railway Track & Structures - October 2007

Railway Track & Structures - October 2007 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Crossties by the Billions Provide Essentials for Full Support Modern Tools Manage Risk M/W Challenges: Better Management of Thermal Forces in CWR TTCI Celebrates 25 Years as Facility, 10 as Part of AAR Products and Literature People Calendar Sales Representatives Website Directory Advertisers Index Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - October 2007

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