Andy Castledine - Rail Operations Consultant and Interim

BSc (Hons) CMILT

I am a business focused rail professional with extensive knowledge of railway operations, performance, train crew strategy, Control office and timetable development/strategy. I add my skills and experience to make a positive impact on the business results within the challenging passenger/freight sector of the rail industry. I am able to influence peers and colleagues to embrace change and become advocates. I'm analytical and pragmatic, cutting to root causes of critical issues and generating solutions and/or options in collaboration with key colleagues to realise improvements in productivity and efficiency. I'm proficient at handling Human Resource issues, demonstrating the skills required to head-off problems proactively. I am able to act as key point-of-contact for new ideas due to my ability to forecast the operational impact of change.I possess a skill-set gained from frontline, senior management and leadership roles in the operational environment and franchise bidding process. Excellent end-to-end knowledge of rail operational business cases, franchise bid processes and protocols, train crew rostering, train service management and performance improvement.

Experience:

Network Operations:

I have worked across station operations in the major station environments, improving operational performance, trade union engagement and productivity whilst reducing absenteeism and employee turnover. I'm experienced in a number of key operational areas, which underpin my thinking - within real time operations Control office, train crew management as well as dealing with post service reliability issues. I also work extensively within the advisory space, relating to train operator 'start ups', central government as well as overseas entities.

Projects & Engineering:

I have extensive experience within the rail business development environment, working over several projects, specifically in UK rail franchise bids and mobilisation.
Safety & Assurance: Acted as business assurance lead for two UK train operators, reporting into audit committee and fiance teams.

Training & Development:

I'm currently developing my own operational management system which improves safety critical employee situational awareness in the operational environment, as well as working with a third party to generate improvements to rail rule book employee compliance.

Change Management:

Leading from advisory work, I design change management programmes for the operations function, for business/performance improvement or business turnaround.