The contractor

Contritum is a multi$-$discipline contractor with $10$ years$$ experience in railway work. The organisation has doubled in size in the last three years. It has a reputation for aggressively pursuing railway work and getting the work done on time or even earlier. The director of RS has recently attended some entertainment events as a guest of the Board of Contritum.

At a recent event, the RS director discussed the TrainDetect project with the managing director of Contritum. The RS director was told that all Contritum workers are very experienced, producing quality work, and they have worked with Contritum for a long time. Based on accident data, the managing director of Contritum boasted that the organisation has a low number of recorded accidents compared to others in this industry.

Impressed by their apparent strong health and safety values, the RS director decides to meet with the managing director of Contritum again. During this meeting they look at Contritum$$s general risk assessment, method statements and site inspections for previous rail works. The RS director particularly likes the fact that Contritum use their own on$-$site supervisors to conduct their site safety inspections. The inspection results always seem to be to a high standard. The RS director thinks that this will save them time and resources because they will not have to conduct their own regular site inspections.

After the meeting, the RS director decides that Contritum are the contractor of choice for the TrainDetect work for the South region. They also award Contritum the maintenance contract for the region. This includes maintenance on level crossings, replacing lighting at stations, and repairing trackside fencing where it has been damaged or has rotted.

Although Contritum are currently working on other projects and they have never worked on such a large$-$scale project before, they still accept the work for the South region.

The project

Work on the TrainDetect installation is being managed from the Contritum office by a project management team. This team consists of a senior engineer, an electrical engineer and three support workers. Between them they manage the installation of the TrainDetect system across the entire South region with as many as $10$ teams of engineers working on$-$site simultaneously.

The train crash

At $06$:$10,$ an early morning train approaches the signal box, where the work had been completed the night before. The train stops as the signal is set to red. At $06$:$12,$ a second train crashes into the stationary one ahead of it$.$ Some carriages derail and the stationary train is shunted $50$ metres along the track. The TrainDetect system has failed to alert the signalling centre or the train drivers that the trains are too close to each other on the same track.

The station workers see the dust rising from the crash site and immediately call the emergency services. Many people are injured on both trains.

On investigation, the TrainDetect system failure is traced back to one of the old wires that should have been removed by Engineer D$.$ The wire was not bent back on itself and insulated, as per the job specification, causing a fault in the TrainDetect system.

Task $5$:

Contritum is planning to reduce its worker numbers due to lower demand in railway work after the train crash. This change will increase responsibilities for the remaining workers.

Using the key principles of managing organisational change, how should Contritum manage this change?

The Q is for $17$ marks, hence detailed answer is required.