Applying our knowledge and expertise to deliver cost effective solutions that drive value in our clients supply chains.

A rail industry leader who is developing customer focussed products to support the construction of the UK’s largest new build railway.

As the business manager for the south of the UK I was responsible for safely delivering all of DB Schenker’s southern services. This is in the region of 1000 trains per week carrying freight including aggregates, pan European automotive products and fast moving consumer goods in containers. I led a team of 6 people and had the responsibility for 800 members of staff.Through leadership and development of my team we found operational solutions to allow an increase in the number of services for our customers in the congested south. As part of the process of empowering staff members on the ground to take ownership I developed and installed a shared daily performance board at our key customers’ operational sites. This broke down communication barriers and allowed better collaborative working further developing strong relationships. This also increased the quality and reliability of our service to our customers.

In this role I held responsibility for leading a team of 3 people and 600 staff to deliver the operations in the North of the UK. During this job I developed my own leadership and management skills to overcome new challenges. This was one of the largest and most diverse geographical areas to cover including the northern most tip of the Scottish Mainland through to the intense merry go round coal operations in South Yorkshire. Communicating strategy and culture to these employees was one of the largest barriers to overcome. In this role I had the added responsibility for the availability of 1150 coal hopper wagons.

As business manager for the Logistics function of the rail business I led a strategy to move away from pure rail based services and to offer a range of value adding services including a combined offering of international end to end services. During this time I developed an alliance with a road based provider setting up a Control Tower to monitor and manage trans-continental freight. I also led the growth of our terminals business and infrastructure, changing them from being a server of rail services to commercial multimodal hubs providing services to the freight community. This took focussed development of my team to encourage them to grow their business acumen to a level which was comparable to their operational knowledge.

This was a very successful bulk haul logistics project. This projected started for EWS in 2006. I led a team who worked closely with the London Development Authority on a consultancy basis. I also demonstrated to them the value of maintaining the Bow East Facility as a purpose built rail fed logistics facility. This allowed the London Games to meet their environmental targets and also reduce significantly the potential adverse impact on local communities that road based construction traffic could have caused. Bow East Logistics Centre removed over 500,000 road vehicle movements.As the project leader I ensured that everything was delivered through my team. The first stage was to supply key information and reports as consultants to support the case for London 2012 and also prove that railfreight was a possible option. Following the award of the Olympics the next stage was to redevelop the site into a purpose built logistics terminal. Simultaneously another part of my team was analysing the UK rail network to identify pathing capacity throughout the network from key supply points and most importantly through the central London network.At an operational stage we sat as a direct supplier to CLM the project management company for the 2012 Olympics. I led a team who managed:- The relationship with CLM, ODA, Tier 1 CJVs, Network Rail, Points of supply- Supply chains in line with projected construction programmes- The identification of pathing and capacity across the UK rail network- The loading and unloading of trains- The final mile delivery to site- End to end solutions for pre-cast concrete sections- International solutions for fit out materials- Bespoke IT delivery system

Heathrow Terminal 5 was one of the first major projects which used a rail based mass haulage solution for construction materials using a rail fed logistics centre. DB Cargo (EWS as was) provided both consultancy services at the design stage and also operational train running. This was in the area of the Colnebrook sidings which had to be redesigned.DB Cargo designed and delivered the project to upgrade the Colnebrook branch and build a rail fed logistics centre. This included the re-signalling to give more capacity and also a completely new design for the offloading sidings. The redesign of the sidings was to ensure that these were long enough to accommodate the most efficient trains and also that there were enough sidings to handle the maximum number of trains which would be needed to support this mass haulage operation. DB Cargo also identified capacity on the network for trains to supply the logistics site.I then managed the relationships between the end users on site to get their demand and also the supply points whilst also leading the rail solutions team. Through this approach we successfully delivered aggregate, cement and re-bar by rail to the logistics site. This was then used to feed the entire Terminal 5 Construction Site for its’ requirements.