The RailStaff Awards 2024

Nominations for Rail Project Manager Award

Alicia McKenzie

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“The word I would use to describe Cate is inspirational. From the moment, I met her I was so impressed with her knowledge, her commitment to delivering successfully, the way she works with people and her ability to lead. She is calm under pressure, and even in challenging situations seems to always be able to get the job done even when it seems impossible.

She absolutely deserves recognition, for not only the energy she brings to the team, but for her drive and enthusiasm, which is infectious. She makes people around her want to strive for more and be the best they can be. She always has time for you and is just as comfortable presenting high-level information in an open forum to senior executives as she is managing a team on track in difficult conditions. She has been instrumental to supporting the Early Careers programme supporting a number of industry events, has devoted time to promoting the railway industry to young people and has supported women in rail activities and events whilst raising money for charity. Her most recent charity event was taking part in Ride Africa for the Railway Children, which was a huge test of mental and physical strength; there is clearly no end to her talents.

If I had to choose someone to be a key member of my team, Cate would always be my first choice!“

Munaf Ally

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“Cate started in the rail industry just over 4 years ago and within that time has achieved an enormous amount. She is currently the in charge of the overhead line and HS2 Enabling Works within the South Rail Systems Alliance. In the last 12 months alone, she was responsible for the safe, on-time and on-budget delivery of £27 million worth of multi-disciplinary work at Euston Station. This included leading a multi-disciplinary team of 40 strong and direct line management of 8 members of staff to complete some of the following works: refurbishing an access point building and providing safe external stairs for railway access, extension to sidings roads and upgrading the associated OLE, E&P and MET assets and infrastructure modifications on the Euston Throat to facilitate HS2. This was a very complicated scheme, and required a new project organisation to be built within the Alliance to deliver. It also required a lot of integration within the existing teams, and Cate was key in pulling the Alliance all in the same direction. Furthermore, good stake holder management was key, which Cate led on with the Train Operators and Network Rail.

As a project manager, Cate aims to be approachable to her team, fair and lead by example. Her work is of a very high standard, she is 100% committed to the team including working as a duty manager on weekends and she has a professional attitude. Cate is also a mentor for a graduate and several apprentices within the company.

Cate has also been involved in bringing good practise back from the wider Colas Rail group and implementing within the UK OLE Team. During her time at the company, Cate has twice won Safety and Sustainability challenges for re-useable dust masks and remote temperature monitoring – both of which have been rolled out across the infrastructure division.

On top of this Cate has just returned from Ride Africa – a charity challenge run by the Railway Children to raise vital funds for vulnerable street children in India, UK and East Africa. Cate is also a STEM ambassador and at events promotes the study of STEM subjects and encourages future talent to join the railway industry including volunteering her time to help install an OLE training span at the HS2 High Speed Rail College in Birmingham.“

Terry Hare

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“I have had the pleasure of working with Catherine on the HS2 enabling works at Euston and now Old Oak Common.

I work for Readypower so I have no advantage or tangible benefit for writing this other than the purest reason which is she deserves recognition.

She is an exception to the rule and an absolute asset to the Railway industry. Very passionate, educated, experienced, driven individual who understands the railway beyond her years. Knows how to work with staff at all levels and discipline's which in my experience is rare.

But most importantly she continues to delivery planned works to the highest standard, on time and the evidence is there to speak for itself.

I genuinely hope she wins this award and gets the recognition she's deserves from her peers“

Michael Byrne

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“Catherine provided timely reports, excellent safety paperwork for review of upcoming tasks. Communications with Catherine were professional and concise to ensure all stakeholders were engaged and information shared was of sufficient clarity in context of undertakings.

Camden Depot is situated within a high Hazard environment being a live operational Railway Depot. Scrutiny of WPP/TBS were to achieve very high quality and detail before approval of sit activities could be accepted/approved. The quality of the submitted work packages was very good with any additional follow up TQ's responded expediently.

I can highly commend Catherine for her contribution to this project.“

Sepehr Semsarzadeh

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“Within less than a year through her graduate scheme, Cate joined the very demanding plain line track renewal team to assist with a relentless track renewal work bank of 50 plus core renewals a year to renew approximately 30km of plain line track. Only after a week Cate built an exemplary rapport with every single 72 people in the plain line team through her own pro-active and supportive approach. Cate was a breath of fresh air with her positive energy, professionalism and willingness to succeed. She definitely played a crucial role in turning around Plain line operational performance into a success story.

Her ability to not give up, influence and manage some strong personalities of railway site managers, even as a graduate was very impressive. Cate’s leadership skills, hardwork, commitment and thrive to success have been exemplary in my time working with her. I can very easily say Cate is one of the most inspirational and impressive people I have come across, who always raises the standard and brings out the best not only in her team but her managers too.

Cate has introduced a number of initiatives to improve the operational and commercial performance during her time with plain line team, such as introduction of T-1 pulse check to ensure safe and on time delivery of the weekend renewals. Moreover, she has lead on construction estimate meetings where she engaged different disciplines such as S&T, ETE, OLE, Safety and Pway teams to ensure renewal cost estimates are accurate for on-budget delivery of annual work bank. Cate has also transformed the format and quality of rostering the site managers and duty managers for plain line team, which is still being used by S&C alliance South East track renewal team.

Cate has recently taken part and successfully completed Ride Africa for Railway Children charity which is another testament for her excellent commitment and hard work. I was one of the lucky ones to have the honour to directly work with Cate for a year. She is truly an asset for any team and definitely deserves this award.“

Mandela Govera

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“Cate is a hard working Project Manager with very good attention to detail. She has led the team in completing some challenging multi-disciplinary works at Euston and Watford in the last year. She is a good motivator and an excellent leader.“

Aisha Mughal

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“Working with Cate for the past 14 months has allowed me to learn a great deal about the railway, remaining calm under pressure and striving to do the right thing. Cate is an inspiration for all young women in the industry like myself to go that extra mile, positively influence their team and consistently strive for improvement. An industry which is dominated by males, Cate has been exceptionally encouraging by successfully managing a multi-disciplinary team to deliver the most dynamic and challenging projects within the S&C South Alliance; Euston Enabling works. Seeing Cate in a leading operational role from delivering whiteboards to being duty manager on site has shown myself the right balance between pushing and challenging the team to deliver better whilst supporting the team in any way you can. Personally Cate has supported me from the start of my career at Colas, she has helped me transition from playing a supporting role in Commercial into a leading role; giving me confidence and extra time. Her hard work, enthusiasm and optimistic self serves to motivate and energize her project staff and young females.“

Shadi Shekarrizi

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

“Cate has an outstanding commitment to her work. This is evident through the success of her projects at Euston. Through team work and collaboration with the Alliance team, Network Rail and all the various stakeholders, she managed and safely delivered a large portfolio of works across multiple work packages during operationally critical possessions.

Her engagement with my design team was structured and proactive, enabling a design programme to be developed which accurately cascaded into her construction programmes.

The individual impact of Cate's leadership was paramount in deconflicting busy worksites and agreeing access arrangements with maintainers and operators.“

Tris Edwards

Said the following about Catherine Lough:

““As part of Colas Rail’s supply chain helping to deliver the Euston Enabling Works project, I cannot recommend Cate Lough highly enough. She managed her team efficiently and effectively, making sure that they provided us with the information we needed to complete our works in the format we needed and at the times required. Cate made herself available to talk through each package of the works with us which really made us feel part of the team and fostered an excellent working relationship. She dealt with any problems positively and fairly, prioritising delivery of the work rather than seeking to apportion blame. Cate’s commitment to delivering the project whilst minimising its environmental impact was second to none and she made sure that the applicable environmental requirements (HS2 EMRs) were complied with and, where possible, exceeded. Throughout the works, Cate engaged with us to make sure the methodologies being utilised would be acceptable to the Local Authority from a noise and vibration perspective, which are our specialities. This was challenging, given the scrutiny that the project was under from all stakeholders, particularly local residents. But Cate was up to the challenge!”“