Sara Carnduff

Said the following about Richard Maries:

“Described by customers and colleagues alike as: exceptional, experienced, knowledgeable, technical, hardworking, passionate, unassuming and caring, in a career spanning 30 years, Richard has worked in various industries including rail, highways, aviation and defence, mentoring more than 20 teams and individuals during that time. As a specialist in ‘real time’ telecommunications, Richard was instrumental in the implementation of the 1st generation Customer Information Systems (CIS) back in the 1980’s, at the start of the journey to improve the customer experience across the railway.

As the Contractor’s Responsible Engineer (CRE), Richard has been involved in the design and implementation of some of the largest station enhancement programmes in the UK including Railtrack’s ‘Modern Facilities at Stations’, Network Rail’s ‘Access for All’ and many CIS systems for Train Operating Companies (ToCs) including Merseyrail, Northern Rail and Chiltern Mainline. Currently working on Crossrail as the senior systems architect and lead CRE for telent, Richard is pivotal to the station management system works. As the interface across 24 stations, he leads the collaboration with multiple stakeholders, meeting key milestones and realising efficiencies, a huge achievement on such a challenging project.

Committed to improving customer experience, driving innovation and providing the best results, Richard has made it his mission to understand and develop the best solutions for the full life cycle of CIS, Public Address (PA) and CCTV systems. Consequently, Richard has been involved in all aspects from design, manufacturing, implementation and maintenance of both equipment and systems, broadening his knowledge, and becoming renowned across the rail industry for his innovative approach, problem solving and solutions. Utilising his extensive knowledge and collaborative ‘one-team’ approach, Richard has worked with software developers, designers and those involved in implementation to help them understand ‘real time’ systems in the rail environment, to see the bigger picture and the importance of designing for the future, which has resulted in changes in approach. This has enabled extremely innovative, whole-life time and cost-efficient solutions.

“You can always rely on Richard to provide a solution to any engineering issue which always takes into consideration the bigger picture and demonstrates a collaborative approach”. Conor Maton, Network Engineer and Graduate of the Year 2017 – telent.

As a believer in collaboration and knowledge sharing being the key to successful delivery, Richard introduced a ‘template design’ document back in the 1990’s as part of the ‘Modern Facilities at Stations’ programme which rationalised the definition of scope and requirements and facilitated equipment selection, enabling efficiencies to be made across hundreds of stations. As a national programme, Railtrack (now Network Rail), quickly realised the benefit of the ‘template design’ document, issuing it to all contractors to use as part of the works packages, thereby creating a consistent approach to telecoms design.

Continuing to develop the ‘template design’ document, and combining it with a building block approach to meet modern standards and requirements, Richard still uses it on all his projects and the template is currently being used to manage the complex works on Crossrail with several contractors and numerous stakeholders.

Acting as the interface for the Crossrail CIS works, having established trusted relationships from the outset, Richard’s ‘template design’ document is being used to facilitate the design, specify equipment requirements and implementation for the supervisory control and monitoring of all CIS, PA, CCTV, Passenger Help Points and SCADA alarms across all 24 stations. It has provided, and continues to provide, consistency, standardisation and has enabled improved collaboration, resulting in significant time and cost-efficiencies for all parties involved.

“Having worked with Richard for around 2 years on Crossrail, he is extremely knowledgeable, and his understanding of systems, equipment and design through to installation of CIS and PA is invaluable. Richard is approachable and always there to discuss matters so that we work together to mitigate and establish the best solution for all parties.

With Richard’s broad range of knowledge, experience and his willingness to help and support others, he is a fantastic engineer and easy to work with as we speak the same engineering language!” Dave Carter, CRE for Abbey Wood station telecoms delivery – Cartercomms Consulting.

As the lead CRE with an in-depth understanding of the Crossrail project and trusted relationships with other contractors, working closely with Network Rail, Richard is heavily involved in the regular Interdisciplinary Reviews (IDR). He supports all those involved including the customer and contractors from other disciplines such as civils, mechanical and electrical engineering, working through issues to mitigate risks, meet key milestones and finding the optimum solutions to suit all parties.

“As a knowledgeable, experienced, competent and proactive engineer, Richard is a pleasure to work with and his input is invaluable. Committed to achieving the best outcome, Richard has the right attitude and is one of the key reasons we are meeting our milestones and have seen efficiencies being made on our part of Crossrail.

Due to his vast experience and innovative approach, the highly complex systems integration workscope that our team is deploying on Crossrail surface stations is being delivered with improved quality and, above all, safety.

As my programme interface, Richard and I are closely aligned and work together, moving in the same direction to ensure we all meet the programme requirements.

I would therefore like to nominate Richard Maries for the Rail Staff Engineer of the Year award. He is a fabulous engineer, a huge asset to the project and is so deserving of this award and recognition.” Mario Pires, Engineer for LoR SMS & IP WAN (+others) - Network Rail.

Passionate about supporting and developing others, Richard always makes time for people. He has a way of simplifying technical information which helps others understand and by involving them in the analysis and development of the solution, makes all of those around him feel valued, encouraging development of and continuous improvement to both their learning and their deliverables.

“Above all else and despite working above and beyond expectations, Richard always spares time to provide career advice, technical solutions and opportunities for future development to me whilst I am still in the early stages of my career. He has had other graduate engineers work for him and it is clear he has a passion and drive to mentor the next generation of rail engineers”. Conor Maton, Network Engineer and Graduate of the Year 2017 – telent.

“Richard is the font of CIS knowledge and a huge asset to telent! As an extremely experienced and highly respected engineer by both our customers and his colleagues, Richard is committed to achieving the best outcome for the industry and developing others through sharing his knowledge – most of whom who have gone on to have successful careers. With such selfless attributes, we feel Richard is a worthy nomination for this year’s Rail Staff ‘Engineer of the Year!” Steve Dalton, Managing Director – Transport, telent.“