Translink has awarded Bridgeway Consulting Ltd a £1·6m contract to provide training and competency assessment for Northern Ireland Railways staff. This will cover a variety of areas relating to track maintenance, including inspection, maintenance, technical standards, vegetation management and the use of powered equipment.
Mark Bayley and Fiona Ross have joined the board of Network Rail as non-executive directors with effect from May 11, and the Secretary of State for Transport has appointed Michael Harrison as special director. Bayley was finance director and later chief executive of London & Continental Railways Limited, while Ross sits on a range of UK and Irish boards.
Network Rail has awarded Ove Arup & Partners Ltd a £0·8m contract to provide multi-disciplinary design and development support services for the Portobello Junction Enhancement project to alleviate a bottleneck east of Edinburgh. There are options to expand the scope of the contract to include elements from the Growing Lothian & Borders and South England to Scotland Connectivity programmes.
On May 5 Balfour Beatty VINCI announced the appointment of Michael Dyke as Managing Director, responsible for providing strategic leadership for the delivery of its HS2 main civil engineering contracts between the Long Itchington Wood Green tunnel to the West Coast Main Line tie-in. He was previously CEO of the eight2O water alliance of Thames Water and seven global contracting and consulting businesses.
3Squared has appointed John Hickling to the newly created role of Client Partnership Director, supporting customers including Network Rail, East Midlands Railway and GB Railfreight with the Railsmart suite of tools and engaging with clients to ensure that new product feature requests can be acted on. He joins on a part-time basis from Bombardier Transportation, where he was Learning Development Manager.
Contractor TMT has completed an £80 000 Network Rail funded project to resurface the entrance road and car park at Windermere station, and changed the layout to improve safety for pedestrians and drivers.
Change management business Practicus has completed four ‘Ask the Community’ services for two public-sector and two private-sector rail-sector clients. These covered how best to re-shape a programme office to transform portfolio capability and governance; practical advice on migrating data to the Cloud; how to increase buy-in and awareness around diversity & inclusion within the senior leadership team; and how best to implement flexible working policies, process and culture change.
Swedish infrastructure services company Railcare has signed a new framework contract with Network Rail which is valid for one year from May 8.
Translink has added single rail and bus journeys tickets to the range of tickets available through its mLink app, as part of a drive to increase the use of contactless ticketing. ‘More people want contactless payment options so we are meeting this demand and taking every step possible to keep everyone safe whilst using public transport’, said Group Chief Executive Chris Conway.