LNER’s Business Leadership Team Update 2018

London North Eastern Railway’s Business Leadership Team Update

60 of the most senior managers from LNER travelled to Newcastle for the meeting at the Discovery Museum’s Grand Hall, which took place just a month after LNER took over operation of the East Coast line. The day involved updates from areas across the business and most importantly a section focused on business planning – with the recent change from Virgin to LNER, the business leadership team used the time together to plan out some of the ways they will start to do things differently going forward.

The meeting was held during Great Exhibition of the North – an 80-day celebration of Northern art, culture and innovation which took place across the summer in venues right across NewcastleGateshead. As one of the key venues in the Exhibition, Discovery Museum featured a rare opportunity to see a new North-East built LNER Azuma train, which was parked directly outside of the venue. Highlighting both old and new Northern innovation, the museum was also home to Stephenson’s iconic Newcastle-built Rocket locomotive during the Exhibition, which had returned to its birth-place for the first time. Visitors were also offered a taster of what it’s like to drive the Azuma train and to discover the different jobs on the East Coast line with LNER’s virtual reality experience.

Organiser verdict:
Kayley Marchant, Internal Communications Manager at LNER, said: “With the Great Exhibition of the North happening this summer, it was crucial that Newcastle was the location for this event, allowing our business leadership team to experience this first hand. Discovery Museum was a natural choice with LNER so heavily involved in the programme there. The Rocket defined a new era in transport during the 1800s and it provided a great contrast for our session, where we were working on creating a modern, forward-thinking railway while not forgetting our heritage.

“The museum’s Grand Hall may have seemed large for a relatively small number of people, but it meant we could use the space cleverly for business updates at the front, break-out sessions at the back and lunch in the middle – keeping things fresh for our delegates.”