Martin Harris is MD at Go-Ahead-owned Brighton & Hove. He chats to us about his career, progress at the company and his industry mentors
Q. Tell us about your background in the industry.
A. I spent 12 years with Roger French at Brighton & Hove, and 18 years as a Director with Go North East, including the amazing Peter Huntley years – so as mentors go, I’ve been pretty spoilt.
I’ve always tried to bring my own take on providing our services by looking beyond the industry for inspiration, not just looking within it.
Q. How have you found the first few years as MD at Brighton & Hove?
A. I have absolutely loved it, it’s my dream job. There’s been a period of great change bringing two great bus service brands in Metrobus and Brighton & Hove together, and some changes have proved more challenging than others, but the key to the success here has been the focus on building strong teams.
I have a brilliant team of directors and they in turn have been building and strengthening and really pushing ownership and accountability out through their teams. We are still working on improving but the progress is tangible.
It’s been a tremendous turnaround in engineering, working relationships in operations that just keep getting better and better now, and a vibrant and exciting working programme.
Q. Since becoming MD, what have been your most important achievements?
A. Being successful is generally adding to rather than preserving what was here before. For example, in our work to prioritise accessibility for all, to invest in ever higher standards of comfort and convenience for our customers through 100% wi-fi, next stop audio-visual, adding USBs, and critically, massively improving air quality – we will achieve our target for the LEZ one year ahead of the requirement.
It’s also been inspiring to work with so many amazing people in the community, and to reflect their work and the personality of the city in our ‘special edition’ buses.
Q. Moving forward – what do you hope to achieve in 2017?
A. I get more excited each year about the possibilities here, and with our amazing 1,500 or so colleagues the sky is the limit, but I feel this year is the time that our work to establish the new combined business as a truly values-driven organisation.
We have so many exciting new projects on the go inside and outside the business – new partnership opportunities following the Bus Services Act and new opportunities on Clean Air Zones.
We plan to keep growing our service and serving our customers better, and get more and better customer communication, more human presence as well as more use of technology, and more investment. It’s going to be another stretching but exciting year.
Q. Where would you like to see the business in the next few years?
A. Delivering ever-cleaner bus services with a higher customer spec running on increasingly bus-friendly highways. With our partners we have built the platform to achieve that, and I’m looking forward to proving that mobility as a service doesn’t mean the days are numbered for buses – just the opposite is true. There are really exciting opportunities ahead.
