From zero to 100mph: how Chartered Manager Tony keeps a cool head

One summer’s day in 2022, Tony Bowen CMgr FCMI was busy at work as contracts manager at Transport UK when he received an urgent text message: someone had received a suspected adder bite on the nearby Norfolk coast. 

As a coastguard rescue officer, working primarily in search and rescue, Tony was soon heading to the scene with a small team of fellow volunteers, expecting to escort the unfortunate casualty to an ambulance. But this quickly became a typical example of what Tony calls “a job going kinetic”. 

The holidaymaker in question was lying in a remote spot up in the sand dunes and had slipped into severe and potentially fatal anaphylactic shock. 

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The incident demonstrates how well Tony’s management skills, applied in his day-to-day running of rail replacement bus operations across the Greater Anglia network, apply to the world of search and rescue. 

No headless chickens

“Things can go from zero to 100 miles an hour very quickly,” Tony says. “You have to know you can walk into any situation and step into different roles with confidence – and work through the challenges in a methodical way.”

In Tony’s day-to-day work, that means coordinating alternative transport for both planned and unplanned rail disruptions. His team of just five manage a turnover of around £12m a year. 

That day in the dunes, his methodical approach saw him calling an air ambulance and carefully carrying the casualty on a stretcher for half a mile down a rugged track to a spot where it could land. 

Tony then had to figure out which medical location could provide the right care in the shortest time. While the region has two hospitals, he discovered that vets are more likely to carry the antidote for adder venom, because dogs are more likely to be bitten than humans. Having been handed over to the next level of care, the casualty was flown to a local hospital to receive the antivenom that had been sent there. 

A cool head is vital in any call-out.

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“The last thing an injured person wants is someone else to turn up and run around like a headless chicken,” says Tony, who served in the military prior to starting his transport career. “I’m an old hand. I’ve been in real trouble in my life. I’ve been shot at. So unless something is going to trump that, it’s not going to faze me.”