Dr Hannah Persson
Senior Design Engineer, Crossing Development, Engineering and Assurance, Progress Rail, Britain
Age: 37. Years in industry: 12
ANY visitor to Progress Rail’s facility in South Queensferry, Scotland, is likely to be quickly introduced to Dr Hannah Persson, a senior design engineer. Hannah is described as “an engaging person who represents the best of our company,” by her colleagues. During site tours she regularly offers expert insight into the complexities of Progress Rail’s products and processes in an engaging manner, leaving visitors informed. She “genuinely promotes how we add value to our customers,” a colleague states.
Hannah has a PhD in cast crossing design and analysis, and her academic studies challenged existing preconceptions in this field. Her work on bearer spacing resulted in a change in the next-generation of crossing design for Network Rail, Progress Rail’s key British client. Hannah also makes daily decisions on whether a crossing should be scrapped and balances product needs with in-service performance of safety-critical components.
Hannah transitioned from a graduate employee to becoming a key member of the company’s technical team. She successfully combined her full-time job as an engineer with completing her PhD on a part-time basis. She has also spent a considerable amount of time away from home in the past 14 months while she qualified as a flash butt welder.
Hannah is a passionate advocate for greater inclusion in the rail industry, in particular for women. She is currently involved in the Unblocking the Equality Pipeline in Mechanical Engineering project with her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and Nile University in Giza, Egypt. The two universities are establishing networks of mechanical engineering students and alumni to raise awareness of gender ratios from early education to the highest levels in the profession, to assess whether these ratios are changing, and if not, what can be done to accelerate the pace of change.
Other outreach work includes assisting with school, university engineering site visits tto help raise awareness of Stem careers in the rail industry. She also serves as the vice-president, Scotland, of the Permanent Way Institute (PWI). Among her duties is overseeing the Edinburgh and Glasgow sections and representing PWI at international conferences.
“Hannah is an exceptional employee and her list of achievements and contributions is equally exceptional,” her colleagues state. She is a worthy recipient of IRJ’s Young Rail Leaders Award.
David Benguigui
Project Engineering Director, Alstom, Canada
Age: 34. Years in the industry: 11
IN April 2020, in the first weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, a young doctor at one of Canada’s “hot clinics,” where medical teams were triaging Covid patients, told Alstom that the clinic was so lacking in personal protective equipment (PPE) that medical staff were forced to purchase scuba masks from a nearby department store to continue working.
This dire situation spurred David Benguigui into action. David at the time was the general manager of the Prototype Centre and head of validation and verification at Alstom's former Bombardier site at St Bruno, Quebec. In just a few days he reorganised the centre, recalled staff who were on furlough, and developed a prototype visor. Within four weeks, David and his team were able to deliver 40,000 certified visors to the Quebec provincial government for distribution to medical centres.
David’s entrepreneurial spirit is reflected in his work on more conventional projects for Alstom. He is currently managing project engineering director for Alstom’s North American Rolling Stock and Components division as well as serving as the bids technical manager for the North America and Monorail product line. He has worked on metro, light rail, monorail and automated peoplemover contracts in North America, Bangkok, Singapore, Egypt and São Paulo.
He is described as a results-oriented person with strong communication and problem-solving skills. David’s strong leadership is reflected in his redrafting of the business model for the Prototype Centre after taking over its leadership in 2018. He implemented a new strategy for rolling stock component validation as well as service activities. Under his leadership, the St Bruno centre also became Alstom’s first 3D printing site in the Americas.
In his current role leading the entire project engineering community for rolling stock components, David has put together a dedicated group to support projects already in revenue service and offer additional value to customers by increasing reliability and warranty support.
David also is praised for his ability to empathise and listen to his team. He also extends this to commitments outside work, including as a director of Le Transit crisis centre, a facility for people with severe mental health issues, and as a voluntary coach of a children’s rugby team. “His project management and delivery skills are exceptional, and he has a talent for synthesising information to provide clear and concise insights that help people make decisions quickly,” his nominator writes.
“David’s business acumen and understanding of operations have been invaluable. Overall, he is an exceptional leader with much to offer any organisation.”
Marleen van de Kerkhof
International Affairs Manager, Dual Inventive, The Netherlands
Age: 31. Years in the Industry: 6
MARLEEN van de Kerkhof plays a key role in the international activities of Dutch supplier Dual Inventive, which is a developer of wireless technology products that are designed to make working on the railway safer and more efficient while also boosting the capacity of existing infrastructure.
Marleen has supported the company’s growth. However, she is also steadily building a profile as a passionate rail ambassador in Europe, particularly to support growing rail’s market share to achieve carbon neutrality.
Indeed, Marleen says she was inspired to enter the rail sector by the need to address climate change. She worked on a Hyperloop project while studying systems engineering at Delft University of Technology. And while impressed by the concept, she felt work to reduce transport emissions should focus on improving the extensive infrastructure that we already have, including Europe’s railway network.
Marleen believes that growing rail’s market share is crucial for helping Europe achieve carbon neutrality and is a strong proponent of the Single European Railway Area, delivery of which she says is critical to achieve these ambitions. She is convinced this can be facilitated by accelerating the cross-border implementation of digital technologies. For example, she cites Dual Inventive’s digital systems for safe track access, which enable infrastructure managers to offer instant and safe track access, minimising disruption to rail operations by reducing the duration of temporary capacity restrictions.
Among the company’s innovative approaches to encourage innovation is the opening of research and development centre, FieldLab Rail. Here young graduates are encouraged to pursue their own projects often in the digital technology space but with a focus on rail using the facilities at their disposal. The company has also established a partnership with the National Rail Educational Centre (Railcenter) based in Amersfoort where new innovations are tested and advice can be sought from experts.
Unfortunately, Marleen has found that Dual Inventive’s approach is the exception rather than the rule and believes that such initiatives should be extended more broadly to other European research and educational institutions.
As well as boosting the uptake of new technology, she believes that such an approach will help the rail industry increase its appeal to young people, helping to address a looming skills shortage. At present she does not see enough people making the same career choice as herself, despite rail being environmentally-friendly, now an important criterion for young people selecting a career. She says that rail should promote itself to the next generation by pushing the sustainability message much harder, alongside promoting itself as a place where digital skills and expertise can flourish.
Marleen has positioned herself at the vanguard of this cause by chairing the board of Jonge Veranderaars (Young Changemakers), a Dutch networking group for young people working in the public transport sector. The group promotes cooperation between organisations, arranging company visits, study trips and conferences.
In addition, Marleen is a board member of Rail Cargo Information Netherlands, a public-private initiative aimed at promoting rail freight. The group also works to improve rail freight’s image and inspire the next generation with its campaign Rail Freight: the Future is Ours.
Marleen’s extracurricular work has had extra resonance during 2023, the European Year of Skills. She brought rail’s skills challenge into the limelight with her address to the European Parliament last month where she identified three actions critical to secure future industry skills and diversity:
- keep increasing visibility and improving rail’s image. “We must boost visibility by promoting diverse role models,” she says
- the need for a European skills strategy following the outcome of Rail Staffer, the European programme to enhance rail-related training programmes, which is due to conclude next year and
- the formation of a cross-border partnership between rail educational institutions and infrastructure managers in Europe, following Dual Inventive’s approach. Marleen says that demonstrating and sharing innovation at an early stage allows for the early identification of training needs.
Marleen’s nominator states that she knows better than anyone how important it is to build international relationships. And her burning passion for the cause means that it is likely that she will become an ever-greater presence on the European stage in the future. “For me, Marleen is the best rail ambassador that I have ever come across,” her nominator writes. “She is still young, but is super ambitious. I really think she deserves the Young Rail Leader Award.”
Nicholas Dryer
Senior Manager, Technology Services - UAS Programme, BNSF, United States
Age: 37. Years in the industry: 18
THE use of drones by railways has become an increasingly effective way of inspecting assets. At BNSF, Nicholas Dryer has been instrumental in developing new and innovative ways of using drones to serve the Class 1 freight railway. For example, he recently set up an aerial surveillance solution to help deter and stop theft from freight trains, with the solution responsible for several arrests and the recovery of stolen items.
In addition, Nick developed a drone-based solution for yard security and inventory and has acted as the product owner for “Uber for drones” software that handles requests from BNSF departments to capture imagery, perform a service, or report results to drone-trained BNSF employees in the field. Likewise, Nick assisted with the development of a software solution to manage and disseminate imagery captured by drones.
Nick is described by his nominator as a dedicated, reliable, innovative and resilient employee. He works with hundreds of employees throughout BNSF and his strong reputation means that other departments often come to him for advice and support.
His dedication is reflected in how he consistently supports the night shift after he has completed his day shift to ensure his team works seamlessly with other departments.
He also works with people outside of the railway, whether that is working on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) programmes at local schools, supporting internships and offering tours of BNSF’s operational headquarters. He has also worked with police departments to offer advice and assistance as they have set up their own drone programmes.
Nick is able to identify alternative solutions to big problems that have historically only been partially solved or not at all. “Nick is an asset to not only his team and BNSF but to the rail industry as a whole,” his nominator says.
Part 1 of Young Leaders in Rail Awards 2023 can be found here
Part 3 of Young Leaders in Rail Awards 2023 can be found here
Part 4 of Young Leaders in Rail Awards 2023 can be found here
