Rail Reliability, Capacity and Performance 2014

Dyan Crowther: Chief Operating Officer, TSGN

Dyan Crowther is a career railway woman. She has operated at a senior level for over 15 years, including the roles of Managing Director of a TOC and Route Managing Director of the world’s busiest railway, the West Coast Mainline. She has recently taken up the post of Chief Operating Officer for TSGN (Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern,) the UK’s biggest train operator. Dyan is a trustee of the Railway Children Charity and a Non Executive Director of East and North Herts Acute Trust.

Chris Fenton: Chief Executive, RSSB

Chris Fenton brings to his role experience in leadership positions in the infrastructure and business services sector. Joining BSI in 2003, Chris applied these experiences in switching to the services sector to manage the testing and inspection division, re-establishing profitability and leading the management team in a successful sale of the business. Moving to Amey in 2006, Chris re-established the profitability of business services, as a platform for further investment and growth making this is a core activity for the company. Most recently Chris led Amey’s marketing and strategy aims, building the case for growth and the acquisition of Enterprise. Chris is currently a Non-Executive Director with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

Christian Roth: Chief Engineer, South West Trains

Christian Roth is a Mechanical Engineer who started his career as a trainee with Siemens in mechanical and electrical engineering, followed by a period in sales of Light Rail Vehicles, eventually becoming General Manager Sales of Large Drives. From 1997-2000 he was General Manager for Product Management and R&D for Metro and Suburban trains, then Managing Director of Siemens Electrification for Rail from 2000-2005 and Managing Director of Siemens Transportation Systems in the UK until moving to his current position.

Stuart Draper: Director of Engineering, Northern Rail

Stuart Draper started working at British Railway Engineering Ltd (BREL) in 1978 at the carriage works in Derby as a technician trainee. Stuart moved to the Railway Technical Centre in 1981 as a Senior Technical Officer (STO) working on maintenance for EMUs/DMUs. In 2009 Stuart became Interim Engineering Director and in 2010 became the Engineering Director of Northern, looking after 980 staff and 313 units (DMU/EMU). Since then Stuart has become Chair of the ReFocus group in 2009 and shaped it from NFRIP into a best practice forum for sharing engineering solutions, processes and improvements.

Dave Fidal: Technical Design Manager, Thales Ground Transportation Systems

Dave Fidal is employed by global technology and services company Thales within the Ground Transportation Systems Business in the UK. Dave is a Senior Technical Manager responsible for leading the specification and development of solutions for the mainline rail market.  Dave has over 25 years in the rail sector, including senior positions working with British Rail, Railtrack, English Welsh and Scottish Railways and DB Schenker. Dave is the Design Authority for Thales Traffic Management offer in the UK.

David Taylor: Business Development Director, Thales Ground Transportation Systems

David Taylor is responsible for developing the relationship with between Thales Group including the security, training and transportation systems business with Network Rail. Within this capacity David was the Thales lead for the Network Rail Traffic Management programme. David is a Fellow of the Institute of Railway Signal Engineers and has been involved in the rail sector for the past 25 years in both a technical and commercial capacity, and started his career as a signal and telecoms apprentice within British Rail.

Rakesh Gaur: Head of Innovation, TfL, London Underground

Rakesh Gaur is the Head of Innovation at London Underground, championing better understanding of LU’s technical and business challenges within the UK innovation landscape, with a purpose of focusing solutions to realise efficiencies and accelerate delivery of LU’s technical strategy route-maps. Since 2011, Rakesh has been part of the LU systems engineering team as professional head of RAM, providing thought leadership and business maturity growth to one of LU and Transport for London’s key Mayoral challenge areas. During this time he has also led the development of futuristic ‘visions’ in order to provoke creative thought and discussion on the future of transport.

Richard Graham: Business Manager, Newton Europe

Richard Graham, as Head of the Transport & Infrastructure sector at Newton Europe, delivers operational improvement programmes across a variety of industries including rail. Experience with rail organisations has been with rolling stock manufacture and maintenance, train operations and civil and track maintenance. Richard is a Mechanical Engineering Scholar from New College, Oxford University.

Oliver El-Falaki: Project Engineer, Bombardier

Oliver El Falaki holds a Master Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Loughborough University and is an Associate Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He joined the Bombardier Transportation (BT) UK Graduate scheme in September 2012 as a graduate engineer working predominantly within the services function on design for maintenance, maintenance optimisation and lifecycle engineering projects. He is now a Project Engineer working on delivering AVIS for various in-service fleets around the country, as well as developing the AVIS solution for Crossrail and other Bombardier projects around the world.

Steve Quimby: Head of Data Collection Service, Network Rail

Steve Quimby is currently Head of Data Collection Services (DCS) at Network Rail where he leads specialist teams in the acquisition and validation of asset condition data. Using technologies sourced from around the world, which are deployed on a fleet of dedicated measurement trains and in-service passenger vehicles, DCS provides a 24/7 operation giving accurate, timely and cost-efficient asset condition data that allows engineers and others to gain insight into the performance of key assets on the railway.  

James Herriott: Engineering Change Manager, Stagecoach South Western Trains

Graham Neil: Professional Head of Rolling Stock, TfL, London Underground

Jon Vietch: Production Director, Hitachi Rail Europe

Peter Smyth: Chief Mechanical Engineer, Irish Railways