Amy Rea

Said the following about Christian Irwin:

“Christian Irwin is the Project Director in charge of a large multi-million, multi-disciplinary railway resignalling programme across Western, Wessex and Wales for Network Rail.

He has been nominated for this award for his constant enthusiasm and energy for his projects and team, commitment to quality project delivery and collaborative behaviours, making him a respected and approachable asset for the company.

In the ten years since joining Network Rail as a graduate, Christian has moved quickly through the project management levels and now leads a direct team in excess of 100 staff. He is dedicated to inspiring leadership and alongside his ‘can do and will do’ attitude, energises the team around him to excel and stretch boundaries by thinking outside the box.

He is an excellent line manager with high emotional intelligence. He is committed to the wellbeing of his team and is dedicated to healthy mind/healthy body, he has promoted a flexible working culture throughout his division and conducts all his one-to-ones with his direct reports while going for a walk. His team ‘away days’ gets them working together doing activities, challenges that are such fun but also challenging.

His leadership skills and ability to inspire his team members to excel has led to substantial project successes such as the recent Cornwall Capacity Enabling Scheme increasing the existing capacity between Plymouth to Penzance, and the re-signalling of the North Wales Coast and Swansea areas. He empowers his team members to make decisions and understand their role and responsibility on a job. That said, he is always able to get involved in the detail if required. He listens actively, takes on board suggestions, feedback and works with his team to make them succeed without taking self-glory.

He is passionate about promoting the development of his people and the wider organisation; and has set up a Project Management Community across 5 routes and 2 national programmes for bringing Project Managers together to develop best practice, sharing of lessons learnt and good practice and developing a culture of support.

He demonstrates excellent stakeholder management skills, always coming across as genuine and credible and prepared to go the extra mile for his team, stakeholders and peers. His skills and experiences are widely valued by the organisation and is seen the go to man for leading independent peer reviews of Signalling Projects and providing support in the lead up to Project Commissioning all across the Business.

One of Christian’s recent success on the Cornwall Capacity Enabling Scheme, was not just the successful delivery, but more importantly his focus on putting passengers and customers first and he developed a fantastically successful stakeholder engagement with Cornwall County Council who were co-funders of the scheme. This led to Cornwall Council’s Director of Transport and Infrastructure writing a personal letter to Andrew Haines (Network Rail Chief Executive) describing the scheme as ‘Exemplar Project’ stating that the ‘Stakeholder engagement undertaken was particularly effective and contributed greatly to the positive responses from the Local Enterprise Partnership, from the Community of Cornwall and Local Members’. The letter also mentioned that ‘The level of commitment from Network Rail staff working collaboratively with Cornwall Council on this project gives great confidence in securing funding for further projects and continued development of the rail network in Cornwall and the South West’. Christian is now working closely on behalf of the Western Route with Cornwall Council to develop the relationship further.

In summary Christian is a joy to work with, he encourages me to question norms and always work hard for the team you lead.“