Member Profile | CadRI
Posted onAssociate Member Profile | CAD Railway Industries Ltd. (CadRI)
This is Greg Percy’s 39th year in the rail industry. The last two winters, though, have been unlike any of the ones he knew before.
In November 2019, Greg left behind 37 years focused on the daily operations of moving people and goods, including executive roles at Canada’s largest commuter rail company, to join CAD Railway Industries Ltd. (CadRI) as its Executive Vice President.
CadRI is a locomotive and railcar technology, repair, and remanufacturing business. It has a strong engineering team, and is also a parts distributor. Together, CadRI employees refurbish and upgrade all categories of freight cars, tank cars, locomotives, and passenger cars.
CadRI helps other companies keep moving.
Greg believes their experience can add value to rail operators’ winter operations planning, too.
“Supply chain partners bring knowledge, experience that may be niche-specific (as is the case with CadRI). But, generally, it’s about upgrading and extending the life of big, expensive assets,” Greg says.
When Greg was at Metrolinx (GO Transit), he would convene facilitated sessions with technical employees and external partners after each winter as part of the company’s planning for the next.
Together, they would review what went right, what gaps existed, and what could be improved.
He says it was improvement mindset brainstorming at its finest.
“No one company has all the answers. I didn’t have all the answers. My team didn’t have all the answers. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be winter delays. This was about opening our minds and saying I can be better, faster, smarter.”
The goal wasn’t necessarily to create ideas, but to affect better service delivery.
Greg says CadRI would absolutely be open to doing such sessions with their customers, and he is confident other firms would as well.
If more of these 360-style conversations happened more deliberately, more often, he believes the industry as a whole would benefit. And so would rail customers – freight, commuter, and inter-city passenger.
“Winter operations is an industry challenge. Like playing golf, you can always get better – you can incrementally improve.”
COMPANY PROFILE:
Name: CAD Railway Industries Ltd. (CadRI)
Founded: 1968
CEO: Fausto Levy
Offices: Québec (Montréal), Alberta (Calgary and Lethbridge)
Employees: Approx. 500