Diary of a Travel Planner - West London Mental Health Trust

WestTrans Travel Plan Co-ordinators are stepping into your workplace! To broaden our knowledge of the challenges and pitfalls faced by Travel Plan Co-ordinators "on the field" and to help re-invigorate travel plans across West London, we offered organisations the chance to "Loan a WestTrans Coordinator" for up to two weeks. During the Work Placements we will be keeping a Travel Plan Diary so you keep track of how we're getting on. Maybe you'd like a WestTrans Work Placement at your site? Contact us at westtranstravelplans@ealing.gov.uk  

Agent: Freda Jesudason
Site: West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT), Ealing
Site Travel Plan Co-ordinator: James Calver, Estates and Facilities
Mission: Re-survey travel plan, recommend marketing opportunities, recommend how to roll out travel planing activities to 25 related sites!

Having met with James and colleagues at the initial scoping meeting, we agreed on the projects I would work on and timescales

DAY 1
09:00
Arrive on site. Found my way to Estates and Facilities. Phew! On time.

09:15 - 13;15
Greeted at Reception by Seema, and shown to my brand new desk.
Met up with James, the Travel Plan Co-ordinator, who's already in full swing issuing car park permits. He started early!

Cup of tea on my desk. Wow this is promising to be a very FRUITFUL placement.

James has already set me up with a PC account and telephone number - how efficient! - plus a detailed map of all the WLMHT sites, plus a copy of their latest travel plan so I can start planning the Roll Out Strategy . I'm well on my way!

After a quick catch up over the computers, James and I stop for a wander round the office to meet the rest of the team.

I settle down to read WLMHT's latest travel plan. WLMHT have had a travel plan in place since 2004. They have already delivered most of the initiatives including a parking permit system, which is managed on a daily basis by James, Travel Plan Co-ordinator extra-odinaire, but need help re-surveying and deciding how to promote the travel plan across their other sites over the coming year.

After jotting down lots of points - James has plenty of ideas of how to re-invigorate the travel plan - I start the planning.....

I've agreed to work with WLMHT a day a week over a couple of months so planning ahead is going to be crucial to fit everything in.

13:15 - 14:00
Did someone say lunch?
There's not really much time to stop, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to investigate the Ealing Hospital canteen next door - and I'm glad I did. Beef Rogan Josh - no need to cook tonight methinks!

14:00-17:00
Feeling refreshed I return to the office. James has managed to stop issuing permits for a while and take a well-earned break too.

I make final touches to the work plan, take calls from Nick Isles, Environment Manager who's backing the travel plan re-launch as part of the NHS carbon strategy, and make arrangements for an afternoon catch up.

James and I pop upstairs for the meeting with Nick. We address questions that have come up about the survey, decide how to communicate the survey on Exchange - the WLMHT-wide intranet and tweak the time plan. It's all looking good.

Where did the time go!
Back in on Friday for a meeting with the Comms team to discuss the survey and marketing plan.

Status: On track - Day 1 over!

DAY 2
09:00 - 12:00
Well the novelty still hasn't worn off. It's great working in a new environment.

The Estates and Facilities office is still as busy as ever with endless phone calls and a constant stream of people requesting car park permits or dealing with Estates-related issues. I don't know how the team keep so calm.

Last week James and I had a really productive meeting with Tara and Sophie from the Comms team to discuss how to promote the Travel Plan and James' idea to launch it at Walk to Work Week. They were really keen and will help us get the message out.

Settling down to the job in hand.....I spend the morning looking up websites and reports to check the current status of all the Trust's 33 sites (yes 33!), this will help us prioritise which ones to target first with their travel plans.....great only another 32 to go...

12:00 - 17:00
Got through all that searching. Seems like some websites are slow no matter where you're sat!

James has managed to book himself on intranet training that will be good for getting a travel web page up and running which can be accessed by all sites. At the moment there's very little travel information on the intranet so it's difficult for staff to know what their options for getting to work are - apart from driving of course. I drafted a simple outline of a web page, which can be used as a starting point. Moving forward James can build on this and add news and links as the travel plans develop. The best feature will be a travel plan forum, where staff can post their comments and views on travelling to work....Watch out!

To help with the roll out of the travel plan across all the sites I start to draft a list of the current offers available. The most successful one is the cycle2work salary sacrifice scheme. This will be re-launched in the new financial year.

Another day over and good progress made on the travel plan. Day 2.