Senior Technical Rail Officer

Our client hosts the Rail North Partnership, a team of railway professionals who work on behalf of our client and the Department of Transport to manage the Northern and Trans-Pennine rail franchises, ensuring the franchisees deliver for the passenger in line with their contractual commitments, holding them to account where they do not and planning for the continued growth and improvement of rail passenger services as a cornerstone of a thriving North of England.

Network Rail is developing plans for TRU, a multi-billion-pound investment in the Manchester - Leeds/York rail route. TRU is the largest programme within the current industry funding cycle. TRU development is led by Network Rail collaboratively with the support of industry stakeholders. Train Operators (in particular Trans-Pennine Express and Northern) are an integral element of that development. TRU will see a substantial amount of work on the operational railway over a number of years, which will require increased input from train operators and specifiers/funders to ensure that the work has the minimum adverse impact on passengers and the wider economy, that the outputs are robust and suitable for the whole industry and that the benefits of TRU can be realized as soon as possible in faster, more frequent journey opportunities.

RNP is looking to ensure that we fully support the Programme's development and prepare rail services for the change that TRU will bring through our management of the Northern and TPE franchises on behalf of the Department for Transport and Transport for the North. This will enable us to mitigate disruption during works and to ensure incremental benefits can be realised throughout the duration of TRU, as service improvements and timetable changes.

We are looking to appoint a Senior Technical Rail Officer to:

Act as Rail North Partnership's primary specialist in a role providing critical rail service technical support to the RNP Rail Management Team, Board and Partners in relation to analysing, selecting, contracting and implementing the passenger-service solution for the Trans-Pennine Route Upgrade (TRU) works and interim and final outputs.

You will be expected to provide impactful strategic and policy input by building strong relationships, internally and externally and be able to influence, shape, challenge and contribute to the development and delivery of the RNP's input into TRU.

What we're looking for:

The successful candidate will be a subject matter expert in rail operations and will possess significant experience and detailed knowledge of rolling stock, train planning and timetabling matters relating to service provisions including train length, frequency, capacity and passenger needs and expectations.

In addition, it is imperative you also have a strong understanding of traincrew training and resourcing in order to support business case development for short disruption planning, intermediate and end states of similar programmes.

With good commercial understanding, you will realise the impacts on possession plans and revenue for changes to train plans and will be able to identify, report on and manage risks or issues arising from a train service prospective.

As a confident communicator at senior level you will have the ability to influence a wide range of stakeholders, partners and senior colleagues and the confidence to represent Transport for the North in a range of forums at regional level.

Candidates must possess a relevant degree or other post graduate qualification, or the relevant experience gained through experience, in addition to a professional qualification.

Provisional Interview Date: Monday 9th December 2019

In return, as well as a competitive salary, our other benefits include:

27 days holiday per annum (Pro-Rata for part time employees)
Access to the local government pension scheme
Access to various salary sacrifice benefits, including Travel Pass purchase scheme.
Access to our clients Flexi-Time Scheme, allowing accrual of up to 18 additional days leave per year This is a 2 years fixed term opportunity based in the North of England but with a regular requirement to work from the Leeds office