Context of the engagement

KiwiRail Wellington Metro was working through an important shift in how the metro business operated. This was not just about changing boxes on an organisation chart. It was about creating a clearer, more joined-up way of working across leadership, planning, delivery, maintenance and cross-agency relationships.

The environment was complex. Wellington Metro needed to coordinate across internal teams, frontline operations, asset and maintenance needs, and key external partners, including the wider tri-party system with GWRC and Transdev. There were strong pockets of good practice, but the overall system was often fragmented, reactive and reliant on informal coordination.

Radically worked alongside KiwiRail to design and help stand up an operating model that would improve clarity, accountability and flow across the end-to-end lifecycle of work. The engagement covered discovery, operating model design, leadership alignment, consultation support, process and interface clarification, and practical support to help the new model show up in everyday work.

The work later linked into Wellington Metro’s FY27 strategic goals, annual planning and quarterly execution rhythm, helping leaders move from the design of the operating model into the practical routines needed to embed it.

The Challenge

KiwiRail Wellington Metro was dealing with a set of connected operating model challenges. Teams were working hard, but the way work moved across Metro was not always clear, connected or easy to coordinate.

The issue was not effort. It was operating clarity. Metro was still largely viewed through discipline-based lenses, which made it harder to see the full lifecycle of work across capital projects, operations, maintenance and renewals. Priorities, resource constraints, decisions, dependencies and handovers were not always visible across the whole system.

Accountabilities, interfaces and forums needed to be simpler and more consistent. Planning and delivery rhythms also needed to give leaders a clearer view of work, capacity, constraints and risk, so leadership conversations could shift from reactive updates to better prioritisation, decision making and accountability.

There was also a very human side to the work. The engagement touched operational environments, technical teams, leadership groups, unionised workforces and frontline perspectives. Any future model needed to reflect how work actually happened on the ground, while still giving people enough clarity and confidence to work differently.

So the challenge was bigger than designing a new structure. It was about helping KiwiRail move from fragmented, discipline-oriented ways of working toward a more integrated Metro Asset lifecycle model, with stronger coordination across planning, prioritisation and delivery.

Our Approach

Radically’s approach was practical, collaborative, and focused on helping KiwiRail create a more joined-up Metro team. We worked with leaders and teams to understand how work moved across the whole Metro system, where it was becoming disjointed, and where capital projects, operations, maintenance and renewals needed stronger connection.

By bringing the right people together, we helped KiwiRail build a shared view of the challenges and agree on design principles for the future model. This shifted the macro design from a discipline-oriented view toward one organised around the Metro asset lifecycle, with clearer accountability, better handovers, and stronger alignment around shared outcomes.

The result was a model designed to support one Metro system, not separate functions working in parallel.

Phase one: Discovery and Insight

• Ran discovery interviews and observations with leaders, teams and frontline operational perspectives.
• Explored what was working, where work was getting stuck, and where silos, unclear accountabilities or handover issues were creating friction.
• Brought together themes across leadership, structure, process, behaviours, decision making and cross-functional dependencies.
• Turned the insights into design principles and practical opportunities for the future operating model.

Phase two: Operating Model Design and Consultation Support

• Designed the macro operating model and supported the detailed design across functions, roles, accountabilities and interfaces.
• Clarified related capabilities and reduced unnecessary complexity or duplication in how work was organised.
• Created operating model artefacts, including design principles, organisation views, role and accountability logic, interface maps, governance mapping and implementation considerations.
• Supported consultation and feedback by linking feedback themes back to the design logic of the operating model.

Phase three: Embedding the System of Work

• Helped leaders align on the behaviours and routines needed to make the operating model work in practice.
• Designed leadership cadence concepts focused on priorities, decisions, risk, capacity, accountability and end-to-end flow, rather than just status updates.
• Supported team kick-off thinking so each function could understand its role, what it owns, how it works with other teams, and what matters over the next quarter.
• Identified opportunities to create a single trusted view of work, more consistent planning, clearer data ownership and stronger integrated planning forums.
• Supported the design of future process maps and scenarios to help remove confusion and friction during transition to the new model.

Phase four: Connecting Strategy to Execution

• Linked the operating model into FY27 strategic focus, annual planning and quarterly execution routines.
• Supported a three-day strategy planning engagement with Wellington Metro leadership to shape the vision, outcomes, enablers and FY27 focus.
• Positioned the operating model as part of a wider delivery system: leadership clarity, the annual plan, quarterly execution, team alignment and continuous improvement.
• Helped leaders move from design intent into practical implementation, including leadership kick-off, functional team alignment and the ongoing operating rhythm.

The Shift

The biggest shift was from seeing structure as the answer to seeing system clarity as the answer. The operating model became a way to clarify how work should flow, how decisions should be made, and how teams should coordinate across the lifecycle of metro work.

Leadership conversations started to shift away from reactive issue management and toward clearer prioritisation, a better forward view, more open risk conversations and stronger accountability. The work also helped create a clearer line of sight between strategic intent, annual priorities, quarterly planning and day-to-day delivery.

The engagement also helped reframe the operating model as a shift in behaviour and coordination, not just a structural change. The practical focus was on integrated prioritisation, integrated planning, integrated delivery and clear accountability. This helped leaders and teams see that the new model would only work if it changed how people worked together, not just where people sat.

Across the work, Radically helped KiwiRail create the conditions for a more joined-up metro system: clearer roles, sharper interfaces, better visibility of work and constraints, and stronger leadership routines to keep the system aligned.

Outcomes

The engagement created both design outputs and practical foundations for implementing Wellington Metro’s new operating model. While the model would continue to mature through stand-up and embedding, the core value was a clearer and more workable system of work.

• A clearer Wellington Metro operating model, grounded in how work actually flows across the system.
• Design principles and structural logic to support consultation, decision making and implementation.
• Clearer roles, accountabilities, interfaces and related technical capabilities.
• A stronger basis for integrated prioritisation, integrated planning and integrated delivery.
• Leadership cadence concepts that move forums from updates toward decisions, risk, capacity and accountability.
• Practical kick-off and team alignment materials to help functions understand their role in the new model.
• Process mapping and planning opportunities, including a single trusted view of work and more consistent planning forums.
• A clearer connection between the operating model, FY27 strategic focus, annual planning and quarterly execution rhythm.
• Greater internal ownership of the model by KiwiRail leaders as they moved from design into implementation.

Beyond the formal operating model design, the engagement helped KiwiRail Wellington Metro build a stronger foundation for execution. It clarified how the organisation needed to operate, how leaders needed to align, and how teams could begin moving from fragmented and reactive coordination toward a more integrated, transparent and disciplined operating rhythm.