Richard  Middleton, Director

Richard has over 30 years’ experience in the rail industry. Before moving into consultancy Richard was a senior general manager in a number of railway administrations, including British Rail, the New Zealand Railways Corporation and the NSW State Rail Authority, Sydney. In this capacity he had experience of running rail operations under both vertically integrated and track access regimes. As BR’s Intercity Investment Officer, he managed the investment cases for most of the current HST fleet.

Richard has gained extensive experience in undertaking strategic reviews of businesses and ensuring their effective implementation. In British Rail he was part of a small team which worked to restructure the UK’s intercity business along commercial lines. As Group Passenger Manager he totally restructured, the road, rail and parcels businesses of NZRC to ensure all could operate commercially.

Richard has been involved in the privatization of rail and bus businesses both from the perspective of seller and buyer. He has also undertaken M&A roles for both the companies he has worked for and for clients. In recent years, he has led technical advisory teams supporting bidders on both the purchase of ROSCOs and infrastructure concessions. Richard has also taken the Technical Director role for clients to ensure complex projects are delivered effectively, for example the Merseyrail Electrics network transfer of responsibility from the SRA to Merseytravel, the local PTE.

Richard has been active in the rail franchise and concession market since the mid 1990s. He has been bid and project director for clients on a number of major concession bids around the world, including Melbourne Australia, Boston USA and Santiago, Chile. As well as having a heavy involvement in UK franchises bids over the last decade, including SWT, ECML ,Cross Country and Merseyrail.

Current projects include:

• Framework Director, Public Transport Advisory services Framework, NTA Ireland (2010 to date)
• Technical Director, Rolling Stock Replacement Initiative, Merseytravel (2010 to date)
• Technical Director, Localism for Merseyrail (LfM) Initiative, Merseytravel (2010 to date))