Bottom line up front: Mr. Fritz gutted UPRR's HQ engineering staff from 200 to about 100 in October, including the layoff of the VP of Engineering Design (over 30 years of experience thrown out the door). UPRR was already seriously understaffed in its project design staff, and at this point, has essentially no ability to design a da** thing in house. High paid consultants are the only ones that really know the nuts and bolts behind designing a train track, bridge or signal system.
To put it into perspective, a state department of transportation would probably have at least 500 to 1000 employees for design work for an enterprise the size of UP.
///
I have been reading this page for a while and it is sad to see what is going on with our fellow railroaders at UPRR. Most folks here talk about unionized positions that are being laid off, but I wanted to shed some light on the metaphorical m---acre that occurred in October in a small, but important component of UPRR, engineering design.
Like most Class I railroads, UP lost a great deal of in-house engineering talent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s when the railroads were over-regulated and dying. That being said, in the 90s, UP had a fairly decent ability to design signal systems, tracks, and bridges on its own, without paying a great deal of money to consultants. Design is the quintessence of engineering. At the railroad, we think engineering and it's a guy supervising a track gang, but in reality, that manager adds very little value if he/she has never designed a track and is merely an OMT, fresh college graduate, which many of these folks are.
The idea is that you should have a cadre of engineers who rotate from the office to the field and vice versa, plowing engineering knowledge back into the field, and bringing that knowledge from the field into office designs. It makes for higher quality work, at lower cost, and leads to a better railroad. A virtuous cycle; where hiring that graduate engineer makes sense instead of just being an appendage who is worth less than using an ex-union supervisor.
Today, in the glass palace, on the 9th floor there are around 100 engineers left from the previous 200, which was already a paltry number. They are so undermanned that the only thing that they have time to do is pay off the consultants working for UP and keep track of what's going on. While some of these folks are decent engineers, many, through no fault of their own, know far less than the consultants that they are supervising.
Essentially, the tail is wagging the dog. The outside vendors know far, far more than the railroad about the engineering that goes into track, structures, and signals.
UP also had a very well oiled machine to prioritize new projects, design them, efficiently communicate them to the field, and build them. That machine is completely destroyed; it's just chaos control now.
On a final, absolutely insane note, Mr. Fritz's actions led to the firing of the entire real estate department at UP except maybe two senior managers. Also, ALL Managers of Industry and Public Projects were fired.
MIPPs are the first line of defense between the railroad and any outside entity wanting to build an overpass over our tracks; drill a pipe under; complaints about drainage problems, or even a hospital having issues with emergency services being impaired by our tracks. They fired all off them except a couple of senior managers. The plan is to consult out their work.
Real estate is critical; the department can officially tell anyone that needs to know the details of old agreements, right of way issues, or getting temporary or permanent easements. They're all gone; and the plan is to consult it all out.
Sadly, most of the laid off men and women, simply went to work for UP's vendors. They will be paid less, work more, have less job security, compete with their brother railroaders for sc-aps from UP's table...and best of all, UPRR will pay far more for their services than if they had been kept as UP employees. Outside vendors have high profit margins, charge by the hour, often embellish numbers, and given how little knowledge is left inside UP; are rarely thoroughly checked or challenged.
So yeah, the whole thing is f*. Give it enough time and I guarantee that you will see problems. Especially when we get a year with heavy floods and natural disasters, there will be very few hands on deck to be mobilized for emergencies.
As for UP's engineering department. It's really just a procurement department, with an arm that supervises maintenance gangs.