The RailStaff Awards 2024

Nominations for Project Manager Of The Year

Tim Milford

Said the following about Chris Walters:

“Chris has been project managing the design for two of Network Rail Design Delivery's (NR's internal design-house) most important projects. They are important for differing reasons: firstly, Crossrail 2 which is a multi-billion pound, complex enhancement that is still in the relatively early stages of design (pre-Hybrid Bill submission) and has some rather large questions surrounding it over funding and financing; secondly, Kings Lynn Platform Extensions project, which is looking to enable longer trains to run towards Kings Lynn in Anglia and is currently behind schedule.

For both of these projects, Chris is the Project Manager for the design team. In each instance, he is monitoring the outputs from the design teams in terms of delivery to time, cost and quality requirements. For Crossrail 2 this is a large design team of over 100 people based across a number of different organisations and in a number of different locations around the country. Chris has been instrumental in the implementation of innovative solutions on the project, including executing a BIM strategy on the project to allow co-ordinated production of design across different organisations and locations. Additionally, Chris has overseen the roll-out of a process of Design Close-Calls to promote safety learning during the design phase and allow the share of this learning between projects.

What is striking about the way that Chris works is the extremely close and collaborative relationships that he establishes with his customers. I have continually received praise around his diligence, his determination to meet deadlines and his honesty in communication when there is an issue. He does all of this with a maturity that is well beyond his years and is remarkable considering his relative lack of experience. Evidence of this is the statement from his customer, when they said: "Yet again [I am] continually impressed with Chris and his work ethic and quality of work. He leads the programme review nearly every period despite on paper being the least experienced. I feel he has mastered a very good overview of the project and will become a great project manager in due course if he continues to deliver as consistently as he does."

Chris' efforts over the last year have resulted in the continued successful delivery of the design for Crossrail 2, in the face of constant scope and scenario changes. He has managed to keep the team under control and motivated in their work, which has been a huge challenge. For Kings Lynn Platform Extensions, Chris took a project that was drifting and in danger of missing its implementation date (largely due to client instructed scope change); Chris took the project under his control, re-baselined it in conjunction with his customer and established a challenging, yet realistic schedule that all sides could agree to. His action are likely to turn a project that could have been deemed to have been a failure and will, hopefully, result in successful delivery.

Chris is an outstanding Project Manager and deserves to be Project Manager of the Year.“