The RailStaff Awards 2024

Liam Farrell

Said the following about Mark Somers:

“Mark has dedicated his life to improving the railway. He started with British Rail in 1978 as a Signalling & Telecommunications Apprentice, progressed in various roles from Technician through to Technician Officer and Telecoms Maintenance Supervisor. After 13 years in S&T Maintenance moved into Projects with the British Rail design office based in Southern House, Croydon.

In 27 years of delivery or major Projects, Mark has been responsible for managing a range of projects totalling over £1.2bn in capital investment that have delivered significant safety and operational benefits to the Railway.

Perhaps the most important has been his work on the Thameslink Programme in the London Bridge area. Appointed initially as Senior Project Manager and then Project Director, Mark has been responsible for the delivery of complex track remodelling and resignalling of the railway both east and west of London Bridge as part of the Thameslink Programme redevelopment of London Bridge station.

Leading a team of 65 Network Rail engineers, Project Managers, planners and commercial managers with two main delivery partners, Mark has spearheaded the successful delivery an 8 year programme of development, design and enabling works including a 4 ½ year construction programme which culminated with the final commissioning of the new layouts and opening of London Bridge station on 2 January 2018.

Mark led from the front right from the start – he joined the programme in 2009, while the early stages of option development were being managed by a Network Rail Programme Manager and a consultancy team. Mark instigated a review of the overall schedule and developed a detailed project execution strategy which identified the key elements of the railway systems work streams, organisational structures and operational requirements and outputs.

Working with his engineering team, he initiated and oversaw the development of a detailed master staging sequence for the complex integration between the major civils works and the railway systems which formed the blueprint for delivery and is still being worked from in 2018.

The project required significant enabling works prior to the main construction phase; Mark built the project team structure around this requirement and started a process of recruiting key team members to deliver the early stages. At the same time he encouraged early contractor involvement to bring delivery partners on board to underwrite the development work carried out to date. Mark also set up workshops for key stakeholder mapping and his team focussed on the internal stakeholder management for agreeing track access and operational requirements and layouts – key to determining the project’s success as a whole.

Early in 2011 Mark secured early project authority to commence enabling works with new operational facilities being developed and major cables and services diversions throughout the London Bridge station area. As part of this early authority submission he introduced the same concept to the Thameslink Programme as previously deployed on Basingstoke and East Kent resignalling schemes of separating signalling stage designs from the final system designs. This enabled Network Rail to develop a design capability in-house for signalling systems dating from the 1960’s. This proved invaluable in delivering numerous track and signalling stages on the more complex layouts and equipment at London Bridge itself.

Mark worked with his team and NR Central Engineering to complete the detailed tender evaluation and appoint our main delivery partners. By mid-2012 he had built the team to around 30 people, with a number of key people joining him from previous resignalling projects and from within the Thameslink Programme itself – testament to his leadership and people skills.

Stakeholder management was a significant challenge particularly in agreeing both final track layouts and the possession track access required to deliver the project. Mark delivered a series of presentations to stakeholders with support from the Department for Transport and Senior Sponsors. This work helped Network Rail gain support for the project despite it not being possible to deliver it without some sizeable blockades of the London Bridge area.

With the delivery partners on board Mark led the team to develop the final target costs, risk registers and associated project estimates to support the main investment authority which was achieved in December 2012. Working closely with the Project and Programme Controls teams Mark’s team developed the baseline schedule and a complex set of interface milestones with critical give/get dates between delivery partners.

Mark was instrumental in ensuring that the contract strategy and drafting of the delivery partner contracts highly incentivised collaborative working, with clearly defined shared risk registers and milestone completion bonuses. Mark described this as the glue that would help keep the delivery teams focussed on shared objectives and working to support each other, something which has proven to be true across the timeline of the project.

The main stage construction commenced in May 2013 and was completed on time to the original baseline programme, in January 2018. In the past 4 ½ years Mark and his team have delivered 124 separate railway systems stages, including the remodelling and renewal of over 40 km of track, 154 switches and crossings and complete new state of the art signalling systems throughout.

The new infrastructure has delivered significant benefits in terms of operational reliability and flexibility in the layouts along with significant safety benefits in both operations and maintenance. It has enabled the construction of the newly opened iconic London Bridge station and connections to new infrastructure at Bermondsey dive-under and Borough Market, effectively removing bottlenecks and delivering up to 30% more capacity through the layout for the future operation of Thameslink and Southeastern services.

None of this could have been delivered with the same level of success without the hard work, determination, foresight and, ultimately, leadership that Mark has brought to the team as part of this transformational project. Although not as visible to the travelling public as the civil engineering work at London Bridge station, the track and signalling work Mark has helped to deliver is at least as important (if not more) in delivering a better railway service for London’s commuters and he would be a worthy winner of this award for all of the hard work he has put in over the last 9 years and for his earlier career which provided the basis for this success.“