Mark Davies

Said the following about Paul Walker:

“Paul is an outstanding engineer in the field of E&P Distribution & Plant. He is a shining example of what someone can achieve in this industry if they followed his attitude, approach, demonstrating the company values in in the business and driving power engineering to a whole new level. He has overseen the introduction of new technologies to the business such as the portable UPS units from concept to product approval to installation and operation and the end user in “Mrs Smith” is seeing improvements in her journey North of Derby but she has no idea who this simply brilliant engineer is who has made that difference. Paul has driven the apprenticeship for Distribution & Plant apprentices into a whole new field and is one of the leading engineers in the development of the D&P apprenticeship programmes. He is a mentor to some very privileged individuals who we are seeing continuous improvement in. He has on times been the last man standing during incidents, example being an incident on signalling power where he with the local MOM were lifting troughing lids searching for the cut cables he correctly predicted resulting in finding these and changing the response plan meaning train services were back on faster and quicker than originally predicted so Mrs Smith once again unbeknown to her has her on personal knight in shining armour protecting her journeys on East Midlands route. Paul is just simply in the brilliant engineer category, there is no one else like him I have known is this business. 2018 has been a significantly difficult year for Paul, he lost his sister to cancer early this year and his own wife is expecting their 2nd child soon and thru all of this he has continued to defend “Mrs Smith”, he has continued to drive improvements in the infrastructure, improvements in the reliability of power engineering systems and continued to operate at such a high level & standard that a lot of other people in this business could learn a lot from. Paul is just that person, he is the defender of the infrastructure, he is a natural leader of the army of brilliant people who work on the infrastructure, he is a custodian of the safety & performance principles and lastly he is the knight of “Mrs Smith” and who, through the RailStaff Awards, should be recognised for his outstanding contribution to the East Midlands route power engineering. Arise Rail Staff's Paul Walker Rail Engineer of the Year 2018“