Adapting Railways for a Sustainable Future: Rebalancing, Resilience, and Realisation

George Davies: Director - Sustainable Development, RSSB

A sustainability expert, George has over 20yrs experience as environmental regulator, consultant and industry leader.

He joined the rail sector in late 2020 after 11yrs with Heathrow Airport in a range of roles including Environmental Strategy Manager, Capital Programme Sponsors Agent and most recently Head of the Expansion Sustainability and Environment Team.

In his role as Director Sustainable Development with RSSB, George has led the work with the industry to set out a pan-industry approach to Sustainability. Taking advantage of RSSB’s unique cross sector visibility, technical knowledge and independence to structure a coherent plan addressing environmental and social sustainability.

George is passionate about protecting the natural world and harnessing the power of transport infrastructure to improve quality of life.

John Dora: Director of Climate Sense and RAEng Visiting Professor, University of Birmingham

John Dora is a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham and a Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey. He is a recognised international expert on climate change adaptation, standards, and infrastructure asset management. John has over forty years’ experience in infrastructure, including flood risk management and asset management of railway structures. His career has covered research, construction and maintenance of civil engineering infrastructure and he has become an acknowledged expert in resilience. He is somewhat unique in being experienced as a front-line engineering practitioner who works now at policy and strategic levels, using his experience to advise up to government level with many links into current science and research programmes.

Brian Haddock: Head of Seasonal and Weather Resilience, Network Rail

Dr Brian Haddock is Visiting Professor of Hazard Information & Resilience in the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University and Visiting Professor of Practice at Newcastle University within the School of Engineering.  In these roles he leads on research areas to enhance safety critical decision making and planning across transport sectors utilising new and emerging technologies in engineering and weather forecasting science.

Brian is the Head of the National Weather Team that provides strategic leadership to deliver a safe and well performing railway across the national network in adverse and extreme weather.

Brian also manages the weather forecasting contract with our rail specific weather forecaster Met Desk.

Brian is the National Sponsor for many of the workstreams into Adhesion Management System Research at (Sheffield/ Huddersfield University), he is also the National Sponsor for Adhesion Forecasting Research Trials at the Met Office, Sheffield, and Birmingham University and RSSB.

Tanya Ball: Product Development and Commercial Manager, LNT Solutions Ltd

Tanya has gained wide experience in the chemical industry in both manufacturing and commercial roles since graduating in the 90s with a Joint Hons Chemistry and Business Degree. Beginning her career as Business Manager for the UK’s largest chemical distributor, Brenntag, Tanya soon advanced to the role of Production and Operations Manager at a leading chemical formulation plant. Tanya joined LNT Solutions in 2010 as NPD and Operations Manager and made an immediate impact by developing a new Traction Gel for Network Rail that to this day allows autumn treatment trains to operate at higher speeds and thus extend circuit treatments. Additionally, Tanya has formulated two new 3rd Rail Anti-icer fluids being here and abroad and in the last 12 months spearheaded the drive to validate a new, more efficient and environmentally sustainable technology to remove leaf debris and restore rail head friction during the autumn leaf fall season.

Mona Sihota: Technical Head, Drainage and Lineside, Network Rail

Mona is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the ICE, Fellow of PWI and STEM Ambassador. With over 34 years’ experience in the US and UK in light and heavy rail design, construction, and asset management. Over the past nine years, Mona has been Network Rail’s Network Technical Head for Drainage and Lineside with accountability for the national vision, policy and strategies, standards, research, innovation, and competence frameworks. As the drainage and lineside technical authority, she regularly represents Network Rail with internal and external stakeholders . Mona leads the drainage and lineside community consisting of over 2,600 posts across maintenance, engineering, delivery and asset management functions.

Rebeka Sellick: Development Director, Cordel.ai

Rebeka is a Chartered Engineer and IMechE Fellow, elected to the Railway Division Board since 2015. She organised the Railway Gauging and Clearance seminar in 2023, building on her ongoing work for Cordel, capturing GigaBytes of Point Cloud data from passenger trains and creating useful asset information for infrastructure engineers.

Rebeka has an Oxford University MEng degree and over 30 years of railway engineering and asset management experience. This century, during seven years as Engineering Director ATOC, she got excited about railway system optimisation and innovation, on which she continues to deliver.

William Powrie: Professor of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Southampton

William Powrie is Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Southampton. He is known for his research in environmental and transportation geotechnics, and the behaviour of “difficult” soils and soil-like materials. He is Convenor of the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) and leads the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) Infrastructure Centre of Excellence. He is chair of HS2’s Independent Geotechnical Expert Panel, Geotechnical Consultant to groundwater specialists WJ, a member of the DfT Science Advisory Council and a Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering.

Tony Ridley: Senior Engineer, Transport for London

Tony Ridley is a Senior Engineer within the Ventilation Cooling & Power team at TfL. After graduating from Durham University in 2012 with a Master’s in Aeronautical Engineering, he spent two years as a Tunnel Ventilation Engineer at Parsons Brinkerhoff working primarily on the HS2 rail project. He then moved to TfL in 2014 to work on projects such as the Piccadilly Line Upgrade and Crossrail. Tony conceived the idea of the Cooling Panel in 2016 as innovative solution to manage temperatures in the challenging environment of London Undergrounds deep tube platforms.

Emil Tschepp: SEL Field, Component & Environmental Testing, Transport for London

Emil Tschepp is a Senior Engineering Lead for Field, Component & Environmental testing at Transport for London (TfL). He studied Mechanical Engineering at Brunel University London, which included a year long industrial placement with DB Schenker. After graduating he joined Network Rail before moving to TfL in 2010. While much of his career has focussed on testing rolling stock Emil began working on station cooling equipment research & development in 2017, and he now leads the team responsible for in-house dynamic and environmental testing activities across the organisation. Emil is also chair of the IMechE’s Young Members Board and a TfL representative to the International Association of Public Transport (UITP).

Richard Thorp: Director of Engineering & Technology, HS1 Ltd

Richard is an experienced railway engineer with nearing 30 years of experience in delivering maintenance, engineering, and asset management on high-speed and conventional railways. He currently provides technical direction on the UK’s only high-speed railway, providing client leadership to the HS1 supply chain, embracing technology and innovation to improve productivity and ensuring that HS1 Ltd continues to deliver a world class asset for HS1’s customers and stakeholders.

Sustainability is a passion and has become an integral part of the HS1 business. Richard led the development of the HS1 Sustainability Strategy and the implementation of the plans for HS1 to play its part across all aspects of environmental and social sustainability.

Richard is a Signalling Engineer by training and started his career as a signalling maintenance technician with Eurotunnel and has carried out many roles within the railway before becoming Director of Engineering and Sustainability for HS1 Ltd.

Ian Robinson: Platform Engineering Manager, Alstom

Ian is a Fellow of the IMechE with over 20 years’ experience in the rail industry.

Ian works for Alstom, managing the Platform Engineering Team, in the Global Services Product Line.

Ian’s team is responsible for design authority and systems Integration within Alstom Services.

The team provides support to maintenance, renovation and decarbonisation projects worldwide.

Ian has worked in a number of roles for Alstom and Bombardier managing design authority engineering and asset life management projects for Bombardier’s UK Services organisation.

Ian has previously worked in Engineering Consultancy undertaking certification and authorisation, safety case production, maintenance development and overhaul optimisation support.

Colin Musisi: Development Engineer, Porterbrook

Colin is a Chartered Engineer with over 20 years’ experience covering a broad spectrum of rolling stock systems and project engineering. He has spent over 4 years on new rolling stock fleet engineering from both the operators and manufacturers perspective for LRV, DMU and EMU. More recently he’s spent 4 years working within Porterbrook’s innovation and sustainability teams. Colin’s varied exposure has enabled him to gather a good understanding of system integration and stakeholder management. This wide breadth and depth has helped him understand the railway industry and a lot of its interfaces.

Dave Allchin: Principal Design Engineer, Navitas Engineering

Dave is an electrical engineer with over 18 years of experience in railway traction systems. He is experienced in railway traction system modelling, modelling software development, traction system protection and control, and traction substation detailed design. Over his career, Dave has been involved in wide range of railway traction projects from research and development projects all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum of detailed design of a.c./d.c. changeover systems. Dave started his career as a graduate engineer with Arup before moving to Network Rail for 8 years and has spent the last 6 years working for the specialist railway consultancy Navitas Engineering.

Chibuzor Edordu: Principal Energy Engineer, RSSB

Chibuzor is a chartered electrical engineer with over 12 years’ experience in various functions including maintenance, project delivery and independent assessment. He specialises in rail electrification for which he has in-depth knowledge and experience of standards applied at the interfaces with rolling stock.  As a member on the Energy Standards Committee, Chibuzor was responsible for producing the Energy Standards Strategy. This set out the Committee’s strategic priorities including the provision of energy related standards to support delivery of cost effective and sustainable rail services. Before joining the railway Chibuzor obtained a doctorate in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Keith Pullen: Chief Technology Officer, Levistor

Keith’s career began at Rolls-Royce who sponsored his degree and doctorate. Following a period in oil and gas, he joined Imperial College as an academic, with research in microturbines being foundational to the spin out Turbo Power Systems. Becoming City University of London Chair in 2010, he focused on flywheel energy storage consulting for F1 teams.  Receiving a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship, he co-founded Levistor Ltd for low-cost flywheel energy storage. Now, Keith serves as CTO at Levistor and consults, maintaining ties with City University of London as a Visiting Professor.

Andrew Barr: President, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Hitachi Ltd

Andrew Barr is Vice President and Executive Officer of Hitachi, Ltd., and President, Hitachi Europe, Regional Headquarters for EMEA of Hitachi.

Starting his career in 1990 in the UK Rail industry including his training at London Underground Limited, followed by jobs with train operator GNER, Bombardier Transportation and with the Strategic Rail Authority.

He has worked for Hitachi for eighteen years, joining as Head of Maintenance Delivery and later COO at Hitachi Rail Europe, and then following acquisition, CEO of Ansaldo STS, based in Italy. Andrew returned to the UK in 2019 as Group CEO of Hitachi Rail and took his current role in April 2023.

Andrew holds a BSc (Hons.) in Manufacturing Technology and Management from Brunel University and is a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.