Major Projects in the North of England and their impact on local communities

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Women in Rail Yorkshire invites you to join an event to celebrate national inclusion week, focusing on this years’ theme ‘Impact Matters’.

This event is an exciting opportunity to hear from leaders across the industry about how major projects across the North of England impact customers and communities.

You will hear from speakers who will talk about enhancement projects in Yorkshire and the north east, including the Northumberland line and have an opportunity to ask questions to a panel which will include TransPennine Route upgrade.

Speaking at the event will be:

Anna Weeks, Principal Programme Sponsor, Network Rail

Simon Middleton, Eastern Regional Director, AECOM

Jason Wade, North East Regional Director, Northern

The speakers will be joined by Rachel Thomas, Project Director, TransPennine Route Upgrade for a panel discussion.

The event will be on Thursday 26 September at 17:00 – 19:30 at AECOM Offices in Leeds with refreshments and opportunity for networking.

Panel Host – Bethany Draper, Commercial Graduate, Network Rail

Bethany is a Commercial Graduate Apprentice, working for Network Rail on the Transpennine Route Upgrade. Since the beginning of her tenure in September 2022, Bethany has rotated across the programme between different support functions, working within Procurement, Commercial Management and Contract Management.

Relatively new to the railway industry, Bethany is passionate about the development and recognition of young professionals, as a result of the different opportunities to work within a breadth of areas, which has enabled her to discover her strengths, interests and areas for improvement. Experiencing the key benefits as a mentee, Bethany intends to provide support to young professionals in the near future.

As a result, she is interested in increasing her exposure and contribution to different causes. One key interest is advocating for gender diversity within the railway industry, which is why she is delighted to join the Women in Rail Committee for Yorkshire.

Panel Speakers

Anna Weeks – Principal Programme Sponsor at NR

After graduating from Manchester University with a geography degree, I spent a year working at a transport consultancy before gaining a place on the First Group Management training scheme. This was a fantastic opportunity to spend time in both First Glasgow (across operations, marketing, timetabling, commercial and driving in service) and ScotRail (across operations, safety, performance etc), alongside time on a national business improvement programme. My first role was as Revenue Protection Manager for First Bus in the North of England, setting up a data based approach for investigating fraud, setting up penalty fares payment options and managing a team of revenue protection officers. I then spent a year as Duty Station Manager at Paddington station for Great Western.  This was a hugely impactful role on my experience, managing large scale operational incidents and frontline customer and staff management. I then moved back to the bus side of the business initially in an operations manager role, followed by 2 years as a General Manager at Dewsbury Bus depot for Arriva. This role was a broad role, managing stakeholders, operations, staffing, safety and performance. I also completed my MBA during this time. I moved within Arriva into a Commercial Manager role at Northern in the NE, managing fares, revenue protection, comms, stakeholders and marketing in the NE for Northern. I was fortunate to be able to cover the Regional Director role for 6months, before again moving into a permanent Regional Director role within Arriva at CrossCountry, covering the North East and Scotland. This was a fantastic role, engaging with senior stakeholders including Transport Scotland, DfT, Transport for the North, Network Rail, along with operational management of traincrew depots in Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh. From this role I moved into my current role in 2022 as Principal Programme Manager in the N&E Route for Network Rail. This role manages various projects across the NE & Yorkshire, including new stations, new platforms, extension to platforms, new lines of route and Access for All Schemes. I work closely with DfT and other funders including TVCA, WYCA etc managing projects through funding governance and delivery.

Simon Middleton – Eastern Regional Director at AECOM

I have over 25 years’ experience working in the rail industry in the UK and international experience. The majority of my experience has been in relation to track renewals and asset management and innovative use of performance modelling tools to develop cost effective and efficient asset management strategies.

Over the last 10 years my focus has moved to the other end of the asset life cycle and I have been working in areas relating to project initialisation and alternative delivery. This has related to rail projects promoted and delivered by Third Parties including the development and delivery of new stations and route upgrades – most notably the re-introduction of passenger services to the Northumberland Line.

I am a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Permanent Way Institution.

Jason Wade, Regional Director, Northern

Jason joined the rail industry in 1991 as a ‘Year in Industry’ student, before re-joining in 1993 as a graduate trainee in Personnel (it wasn’t called HR then!). Jason has enjoyed a very varied career since then within Northern, working in station operations, safety, area operations, performance and commercial before taking up his current role as Regional Director in April this year.

Jason has seen a great deal of change over his career, including the positive change in employment diversity, but we still have a long way to go to achieve a workforce that reflects the gender and ethnicity of the communities we serve. He is proud of a strong family connection to rail and has now braved various media appearances in recent years!

Rachel Thomas TRU Project Director

Rachel is a Project Director on the TRU programme, leading delivery of the enhancements project at Hope Valley and the part of the main TRU scheme from Stalybridge to Huddersfield.  Prior to moving to TRU she worked in track renewals for 18 months. This move to project delivery about 5 years ago comes after a long career in Finance, from a year in industry student to Finance Director for LNEEM Route.  During this time Rachel held a number of roles in both in Central Finance teams, setting up the Central Accounting team and Shared Services.