Rolling Stock Whole Life Cost Optimisation

John Smith: GB Railfreight, Chief Executive Officer

Our CEO, John Smith founded GB Railfreight in 1999, with the aim of undertaking more open access work on our rail system. He has worked in the industry for 44 years, joining British Rail in 1977 and later Anglia Railways, where he became Deputy Managing Director. He is a member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

Helen Cooper: Asset Strategy Manager - Interconnected Assets, Transport for London

Helen works as an Asset Strategy Manager for Transport for London. She is a Chartered Systems Engineer who joined London Underground (LU) as a Mechanical Engineering graduate, after gaining a Master’s degree from Brunel University. She has worked across numerous asset types on LU during the last 19 years, including working on Jubilee, Northern and Victoria Automatic Train Operation Signaling Upgrades.

Following 15 years in project delivery, Helen moved into Asset Strategy to become the Asset Strategy Manager for LU Rolling Stock. She was responsible for developing a new asset strategy and directing investment for >600 trains which run across the eleven lines, including the 1972TS still running on the Bakerloo Line.

Helen champions a system thinking approach to solve complex tasks and understand how each element contributes to achieving the overall desired outcome.

Howard Taylor: Principal Asset Strategy Manager - Interconnected Assets, Transport for London

Howard is a member of TfL’s Strategic Asset Management senior team. He is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer, who originally joined London Underground as an engineering craft apprentice. Most of his career has been with associated with the Underground, in engineering, sponsorship and strategic asset management roles covering rolling stock, signalling and major power assets. This has provided him with considerable experience on train systems and TfL’s asset and business planning processes.

Rich Fisher: Head of Strategic Planning, Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT)

Rich leads key elements of the Long-Term Strategy for Rail for GBRTT, including rolling stock. He has widespread industry experience covering train operators, infrastructure and consultancy. He enjoys bringing a strategic evidence-based mindset to non-trivial problems.

Bob Tiller: Engineering Strategy Director, GB Railfreight

Bob joined BR (Western Region) in 1976 as an apprentice at 16 years old, based at Old Oak Common and Reading. Moving around his career focused on depot management and locomotive development. Posts included Production Manager, Fleet Engineer on Great Western, Engineering Manager with BR Projects, Fleet Engineer at GB Railfreight and then Engineering Director. Class 57, 73, 69, HST repowers and lastly the new innovative Bimode class 99.

Andrew Meeson: Lead Sponsor, Transport for London

Andrew works as a Lead Sponsor in TfL’s Investment Delivery Planning Directorate. Andrew has spent the majority of his career working in TfL’s Sponsorship function with experience of a broad range of major projects including Bakerloo Line Upgrade and Extension, Northern Line Extension, Barking Riverside Extension, High Speed 2 and Cycle Superhighways. Andrew joined TfL as a Transport Planning Graduate and also has a Master’s degree in Transport Planning and Management.

Lorena Naylor: Lead Sponsor, Transport for London

Lorena is an experienced Project Sponsor with over 15 years of experience leading high profile, mayoral priority projects including the TfL interface with High Speed 2, Cycle Superhighways and London Cycle Hire scheme. Lorena is currently leading on the replacement of the London Underground Battery locomotives.

Paul Sutherland: Client Services Director, Eversholt Rail

Paul joined Eversholt UK Rails Group in 2006, and was appointed as Client Services Director in January 2020. He leads the Group’s customer engagement, fleet maintenance, and product development and innovation activities. Paul began his career on the railway at London Underground in 1999 as a Graduate Trainee. Following this he moved to South West Trains and worked on rolling stock maintenance and major projects. Paul is a Chartered Engineer and fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers with BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering.

Linda Wain: Engineering Director, London North Eastern Railway (LNER)

Dr Linda Wain has been Engineering Director at LNER for about 18 months, previously being the Head of Engineering. At LNER we run a fleet of Azuma trains with Hitachi as our supplier and ECM under a DfT generated IEP contract. This leads to an interesting perspective on whole life costs. We also have a small fleet of IC225 trains.

Prior to LNER, Linda was HST Fleet and Depot Manager at Neville Hill for East Midlands Trains. Joining BR in 1992 as a Reliability Engineer.

David Buckley: Head of Fleet, Angel Trains

David, who is a Chartered Engineer with the IET is Head of Fleet Angel Trains. David joined the Angel Trains leadership team in 2016 has worked his way up through the business having joined as a Fleet Engineer. David is responsible for the leading the three fleet engineering teams along with the engineering standards teams. The Fleet team at Angel Trains supports their operators with the safety, maintenance and performance of the fleets they own providing a key function of delivering Angel Trains Asset Management Strategy.

Chris Moss: Business Improvement Engineer, Transport for London

A Chartered Electrical Engineer, with over 20 years rail industry experience. Gained through New Fleets Introduction, Maintenance Optimisation and Cross Asset Business Cases & Risk assessments, in the UK and abroad.

Chris has optimised Heavy Maintenance for two London Underground fleets, and Light Maintenance for five fleets, significantly reducing whole life costs.

A member of the STEM community he is proud to ensure that future engineering talent can be nurtured, and barriers overcome.

Daniel Hamblin: Senior Engineer, Transport for London

A Chartered Mechanical Engineer with 15 years rail industry experience across projects and maintenance with London Underground. Has been lead engineer on the Fleet Heavy Overhaul programme since May 2022.

He is a strong believer that a correctly defined project has the highest chance of being delivered on time and on budget. This translates to in-depth condition surveys of systems due for overhaul to ensure the scope of the overhaul is accurate.

He was instrumental in the work to optimise the S Stock fleet bogie overhaul and has expanded this role to cover most Underground fleets.

Hugh Torry: Rolling Stock Engineer, Transport for London

A Mechanical Engineer of 20 years Rolling Stock experience within the rail industry. He has a background in bogie design, bogie component overhaul and fleet technical support. He’s worked in both the private and public sector, within engineering and in support of commercial and contracts management. He’s provided an acute awareness of the need to provide well managed, cost effective and safe solutions and the drive to do so.

Hugh led a small team of engineers to optimise the overhaul periodicities of vehicle components on the 09 Tube Stock due around 0.8 million km (~6 years) including the bogies, brakes and air systems. He now provides support in his role as a subject matter expert on wheelsets and mechanical drive systems with TfL Vehicles.

Sunday Akie: Senior Engineer, Network Rail Infrastructure Limited

Sunday Akie is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with more than fifteen years engineering experience, spanning construction plant management, automobile manufacturing, and railway infrastructure safety governance. He holds extensive experience in translating complex technical challenges into actionable business requirements, to enhance operational efficiency. 

Within the Technical Authority at Network Rail, Sunday plays a pivotal role in overseeing the technical aspects of system engineering in relation to Plant and ensures compliance with industry standards, project requirements, and safety regulations. Sunday actively represents Network Rail as a technical expert on multiple railway industry panels and committees, including the Railway Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN). He has led the development of several national railway standards and technical specifications, for the purpose of enhancing the safety and efficiency of depot plant assets, such as Depot Personnel Protection Systems and Controlled Emission Toilet systems.

Sunday has a strong academic foundation, holding a Master of Science (MSc) in Mechanical Engineering from Kingston University, London, and a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Lagos, Nigeria.