The RailStaff Awards 2024

Abhinav Sunny Chirayil

Bombardier Transportation UK

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Nominations for Rail Engineer of the Year

Rana Pratap

Said the following about Abhinav Sunny Chirayil:

“I would like to nominate Mr. Abhinav Sunny Chirayil for Rail Engineer of the Year 2019 Rail Staff Awards. I professionally know him for more than 5.5 years at Bombardier Transportation, Derby UK. Currently Mr. Sunny is working as a Senior Passenger Information Systems Engineer for multiple rolling stock projects at BT, Derby. He deserves to be nominated for Rail Engineer of the Year 2019 Rail Staff awards for his major contribution to prestigious Crossrail projects (Class 345) & London Overground (Class 710) Passenger Information Systems not only design & development but also in testing & commissioning. He is a key figure in the BT PIS team, who works from project conceptual stage to commissioning of rolling stock on customer rail networks.

While he went through project systems life cycle, he faced several crucial challenges. To resolve these challenges, he has acted based on QTC (Quality, Time & Cost) approach as per BT matured guideline process. The efforts, to be more specific his dedication, Team coordinating skills & on time reaction to several stages of project like Complex Requirements management by ensuring Change & Configuration management in coordination, by this he contributed considerable cost savings for BT. In addition, he has excellent knowledge on final requirements moulding to better performance system design (HW & SW). And there after Systems Installation, integration, testing & commissioning. It will be difficult to mention his fully list of contributions and specific challenges he resolved by getting target results with QTC approach for above projects. I would like to highlight his contribution in Testing (Derby & Melton test tracks and customer infrastructure), it usually involves several internal and external teams, where he has shown his excellent team management skills. With problems raised during testing, he worked in highly pressured environment to meet BT & customer goals with his extraordinary technical skills.

Apart from above projects he is also leading several BT UK ongoing projects like Greater Anglia (Class 720), South Western Railway (Class 701), and West Midlands Railway (Class 730). As I explained above his is keep continuing his remarkable team management & technical skill to achieve several milestones of these projects. Apart from his core PIS, he is also having good knowledge on TCMS & CCTV systems of Rolling Stock. His understanding levels of Rolling Stock Safety & Reliability and Electromagnetic Compatibility engineering are recognized by BT.

While coming to Leadership skills, he was Title Chair of Graduate committee for 1 year while he is doing his Graduate Scheme employment with BT, UK and he also attended Graduate Leadership conference in year 2015. His other notable positions include working for Young Rail Professional (YRP) as Reginal Marketing and Communication Manager for East Midlands region and later promoted to National marketing Manager for his outstanding management skills and team leadership.

Coming to Mr. Sunny’s education and professional certification, he is a Chartered Engineer from EC,UK. He has done his master’s degree from University of Sussex, UK and he has completed his Bachelor of Technology from Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University from India.

As a final word, Mr. Sunny is one of the very few solution-oriented mind persons, this is a great asset to Bombardier. Based on all above information, I strongly nominate Mr. Abhinav Sunny Chirayil for Rail Engineer of the Year 2019 Rail Staff awards.“

Arjun Santhosh

Said the following about Abhinav Sunny Chirayil:

“I have known Abhinav for the past one year and within that duration I have seen his level of expertise in the field that he works in prolific. A true professional, sincere to his job and at the same time making sure that he imparts his knowledge to his colleagues as well. Abhinav is working as a Senior Passenger Information Systems Engineer in BT, Derby.

He truly deserves to be nominated for Rail Engineer of the Year 2019 Rail Staff awards for his major contribution to prestigious Crossrail projects (Class 345) & London Overground (Class 710) Passenger Information Systems design, development, testing & commissioning. He is a key figure in the BT PIS team, who works from project conceptual stage to commissioning of rolling stock on customer rail networks.

He recently got his CEng qualification as well.

Last but not the least, he is a very good human being as well. We need more people like him in the industry if it has to flourish and develop further.“

Daniele Santarelli

Said the following about Abhinav Sunny Chirayil:

“I have been working with Sunny for almost 3 years in Derby back to back to deliver Bombardier AVENTRA platform trains. During all this time we challenged together the difficulties of working in an environment where does not exist the “right way”, or the “wrong way” to do the stuff but only the "rail-way". People of the sector knows how difficult it is to combine old and new, in an environment where, projects last years, old infrastructures and old way of thinking collides with the newest technologies. Sunny as PIS (passenger information system) engineer everyday faces the obstacles of how something extremely new has to be designed, validated, integrated on the train, in order to provide something nice for the passengers and at the same time useful for the company. The integration of PIS systems requires a technical knowledge and dedication that it extremely hard to find in a single person. He has the capability to understand hardware and software issues, to adapt to constant changes of requirements from the clients and to generate requirements that clients even did not think about. In the period I spent with Sunny I have always been pleased to see how he was capable to deal with so many changes that would have discouraged also the toughest engineer, but Sunny has always suffered and solved the problems with a smile in every occasion. I have never seen someone involved in such a stressful environment achieving the goal always with a smile. He managed to develop an actual PIS platform (AVENTRA) where the idea of a platform was not even an idea. After 5 years now we can see Crossrail, Lotrain, and soon East Anglia and South West Rail running on his platform. Together with all these achievements this year Sunny managed also to get the chartership and be promoted as Senior PIS engineer in Bombardier, I would say "not too bad" for someone that started just 5.5 years ago in the railway market as graduate and became the PIS "guru" of a big company like Bombardier.

For all the reasons above I strongly nominate Mr. Abhinav Sunny Chirayil for Rail Engineer of the Year 2019 Rail Staff awards.“

Richard Wilson

Said the following about Abhinav Sunny Chirayil:

“I'm pleased to nominate Sunny-Chirayil for Rail Engineer of the Year Award. I've worked with Sunny for two years and have been impressed with his in depth engineering knowledge and experience. Sunny is efficient, great with the customer and is able to build rapport easily with team members through his bright, personable attitude. Sunny has the canny ability to explain and break down complex technical issues to make them clear and understandable to a wide range of stakeholders. His desire to achieve excellence in his field and delivering cutting edge Passenger Information System solutions across the Bombardier AVENTRA platform has been rewarded with a recent promotion to Senior Systems Engineer. Achieving his chartered status through the Engineering council highlights his commitment to his profession.

Sunny’s most notable achievements include delivering highly reliable PIS solutions for the CrossRail and LoTrain projects and developing bespoke solutions for Greater Anglia customers. Leading cross functional teams with global suppliers to deliver these products has been a difficult challenge that Sunny has managed admirably. He is an important and highly respected member of the Bombardier team. I couldn't think of another person more deserving of this award than Sunny, which is why I'm pleased to nominate him for Rail Engineer of the Year.“