After being appointed General Manager at Thamesdown Transport during a transformative time for the company, we speak to Alex Chutter on his new role and time in the industry
Q: Where did you get your start in the industry?
A: I went to Plymouth University and got a degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies. It was never my intention to come into the bus industry; it was never on my radar. My degree was with the forethought of going into the police service, but at the time they were doing recruitment cuts and they’d frozen applications that were on file with them. So I looked at alternatives, and thought that Graduate Management training at Go South Coast looked different and something out of my comfort zone. I applied and was successful in my application, and in April 2011 I started as the graduate management trainee for Go South Coast, and that involved two years work of on the job training.
The first thing I did was acquiring my PCV licence, and I spent time with controllers and in engineering. I was sent to our sister company Go Ahead London for four months to help out at one of their biggest depots. I covered a Commercial Manager role for maternity leave, which took me through to the end of my training in May 2013, at which point I applied to be the Staff Manger in Poole and Bournemouth with Morebus. That was my first full-time role coming out of my training. I spent just under two years there, and in March 2015 I was made Operations Manager for Salisbury Reds and Tourist Coaches.
Q: You were recently named General Manager at Thamesdown. How have you found your first few weeks in the role?
A: It’s a lot to take in. It’s a new environment, and a new business. I’ve been used to the Go South Coast and Go Ahead way of doing things previously, and you come into a business now, which has never had that privatisation feel about it. It’s certainly got its challenges. I think the company itself has huge potential in the long term, and we’re working towards that. The most encouraging and positive thing that’s happened to date is the reaction from current Thamesdown staff – everybody wants to see this place do well, and so from that point of view we’ve received as warm a welcome as possible.
Q: As General Manager, what would you like to achieve and help implement?
A: I think what we’re trying to do is effectively get Thamesdown back to a position where people are proud of working for it again. I think it may have lost a bit of its local appeal. We want it to become the first choice bus operator in Swindon for our customers, and a company that people are proud to work for.
Q: Do you think that more needs to be done to recruit young people into the industry?
A: I think that if you compare our industry with other industry such as commercial airlines, or retail, unfortunately the bus industry is not a glamorous one, so for most people it probably doesn’t hold the appeal that a graduate trainee might look for in for example John Lewis, I think that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of planning for the future, and attracting more dynamic people. I don’t necessarily think that age is a decisive factor, but I certainly think that the industry requires some more dynamic people to take it forward. We need to attract more people into our industry, but how we do that is probably by shouting about how important the services we provide are.
