Recruitment
“Sarah Barnes, Collaboration Manager, Transpennine Route Upgrade West Alliance, D2 Rail
Louis has an amazing work ethic, he is confident, professional, and extremely passionate about people and about the projects he works on. He continuously looks at ways he can add value and leads by example by volunteering for numerous working groups that focus on improving equality, diversity, Inclusion, health, and wellbeing in the UK rail industry.
In Louis’s role on the committee of the Early Careers Professionals group, he helps create a safe place where members can engage and support one another in the early stages of their careers. The committee looks at enhancing professional development and networking opportunities for apprentices, graduates, placement students or anyone new to the industry.
He has a keen interest in equality, diversity, mental and emotional health, and how it affects people in and out of the workplace. To be able to support his friends, family, and work colleagues he volunteered to be Mental Health First Aider. He completed his training and immediately join the Mental Health First Aider group on TRU West Alliance, supporting up to 1200 people across the project.
Louis is also the founder of the Equality Diversity and Inclusion group for D2 Rail, and volunteers on the TRU West Equality Diversity and Inclusion group as an ED&I Champion. As part of his role in the group Louis leads the Age workstream for the protected characteristics under the ED&I act. Louis’s goal is to help make strides in equality, diversity, and inclusion within the industry. In his role as an ED&I Champion he helps bring awareness and improve the experience of all employees for underrepresented groups with protected characteristics.
Although Louis’s background is not in Rail, he strives to find improvements and a smarter way of working. At D2 Rail he has implemented a challenge statement process which lets anyone in the business put forward a problem that needs to be resolved. He then assigns people to a work stream to resolve the issue. This has been extremely important in the development of our company.
Louis is a shining example for newcomers to the rail industry. He looks at ways he can make it easier for others to follow in his path by providing guidance, support and helping to create a positive working environment.“
“Louis has become an integral part of both the D2 Rail Project Controls Team and the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TRU) West Alliance Planning & Controls Team.
Louis has very quickly grasped the fundamentals of Earned Value Management and enabled a smooth transition of responsibility for the administration of the Alliance Earned Value Management System.
His work revising the Earned Value Management Plan and Deltek Cobra User Guide have shaped the development of the Alliance process, and helped to improve efficiency and data quality.
He has recognised that working on a major programme like TRU provides access to learn from some very experienced and knowledgeable individuals, and has proactively sought opportunities to extend his own professional development into other areas, such as Risk Management, Change Management, Schedule Management and Reporting.
Louis is very inquisitive, and asks pertinent and insightful questions about the Project Controls profession that force even senior practitioners to challenge their own thinking on the subject-matter.
All-in-all, Louis has been a joy to work with and continues to impress with his dedication, compassion and professionalism.“
“Louis has embraced life as a Junior Project Controls team member and has already shown leadership traits; leading initiatives within D2 Rail and also within the client organisation.
He's diligent, honest and inquisitive so given the nature of the controls function has great qualities to help him succeed.“
“I have had the tremendous pleasure of knowing Louis for a couple of years now - and I have never met such an overtly positive person, with such a capacity to see the positives in things and laterally think their way through issues to produce positive outcomes. Louis was the stand-out candidate through the inaugural graduate intake year and has gone on to excel in any and every discipline he has been assigned to - consistently going above and beyond the day-job - to better and enhance his employing company and our clients. His contribution to the EVMS and Risk & Value across the TRU Alliance have been echoed in dispatches on numerous occasions. His contribution should now, I believe, be recognised across the wider industry.“
“I’m delighted that Louis has been nominated for this award and it provides the recognition he deserves as a rising star within the industry and the Transpennine Route Upgrade West alliance. Louis has already become a key member of Planning & Project Controls function and demonstrates the alliance values and behaviours on a daily basis. As a person Louis is always engaging, shows great maturity, takes every day in his stride with a smile on his face.
The 2 major contributions I would like to mention are.
• Leading the development of the Transpennine Route Upgrade West Planning & Project Controls reporting intranet platform, which allows the alliance to publish our reporting outputs and analytics across the alliance. In recognition for his work in this area, Louis been nominated for alliance employee of the period on multiple occasions.
• The EVM system Louis administrates is industry leading and is now driving the narrative in assessing project and programme performance.
It’s been a pleasure working with Louis and I’m looking forward to seeing his development continue in the months and years ahead.“
“Since joining D2 Rail in August 2020, Louis has made a significant contribution to the D2 Rail business and to the wider industry.
Louis has proven in a short space of time that he is an extremely competent and adaptable professional with incredible people skills and emotional intelligence.
He joined the team at an extremely challenging period of time during Covid, but he has integrated with the team and the project seamlessly, and he has taken everything in his stride and shown great courage throughout. Louis has exemplar behaviours and work ethic that have been demonstrated on a number of Project and D2 Rail workstreams with positive feedback received from key stakeholders.
Louis is always willing to support the wider team, whether in a caring capacity as a mental Health first aider or in a work capacity where he regularly goes above and beyond to support his peers.
Louis is keen to learn from his experience and consider how he can apply lessons to himself and others within the business. A good example of where this has been applied is in the D2 graduate recruitment process, where Louis supported the 2021 process and applied some effective improvements to the recruitment and onboarding process.
Louis regularly engages with senior leaders within the D2 Business. As well as making some great contributions to business strategy discussions and decisions, Louis is willing to challenge senior leaders within the D2 business with informed and insightful feedback. Louis has volunteered to lead and support various business critical workstreams alongside his project commitments. In all cases, Louis has provided dedication and significant effort and contribution in maintaining and building on the initiatives that he is involved in.
Louis has led the implementation of the Equality, Diversion and Inclusion workstream, which included setting a staff ED&I survey so that we could understand our company’s diversity metrics and company culture; Louis is now supporting a number of improvement initiatives based on the feedback. This workstream is fully supported and sponsored by senior leaders within the business, but with Louis leading the collective workstream, it has gained exceptional momentum in the last 12 months.
Louis instigated a periodic challenge statement initiative within D2 that sought areas of improvement within the business through staff consultation. The challenge statements were collated, prioritised and then sponsored and delivered through collaboration between functions within the business. The resultant improvements have delivered significant value within the business, some of which have also realised benefits on live projects.
Louis has a strong awareness of, and an interest in social value and what it means to each of us as individuals and the business as a whole. To strengthen the D2 business and ensure that we are meeting our social objectives, Louis led the development of the Social Value Strategy. The strategy explains how and why the business will make a conscious effort to contribute to the long term wellbeing and resilience of individuals, communities, and society in general. It includes D2 Rail’s commitment to reaching Net Zero by 2050.“
“Louis did an incredible job preparing for the Early Career Professionals (ECP) event that took place on the 21st September, which was a great success. He has also clearly stood out as an integral leader upon the ECP Committee. It is not an exaggeration to state that without Louis’ personal hard work and commitment, the success of the event would have been severely compromised. Louis should be very proud of the role he personally played and his achievements in the run up to and throughout the event itself.
Not only did Louis take the lead in managing action logs, chivvied others to complete the actions allotted to them and personally created a lot of the collateral for the event (i.e. the PPT deck), he also generated many of the ideas that helped shape the event.
Louis has become a ‘go to’ member of the Committee, whose opinions are valued, and can be fully trusted to deliver upon his commitments. Louis efforts with the ECP have not gone unnoticed, with many members of the Transpennine Route Upgrade Senior Leadership Team, including Neil Holm, sharing positive feedback about their interactions with Louis and Louis’ output both before and after the ECP event.
Louis readily volunteers to pick up actions and workstreams outside of his Project Controls Assistant duties, such as managing the Transpennine Route Upgrade West Planning & Controls (P&C) SharePoint site and authoring regular P&C Team Newsletters. Louis is a real credit to the ECP, Transpennine Route Upgrade West and the TRU Programme as a whole - thanks Louis!“
“Louis has been a great addition to the Transpennine Route Update West project, he has excelled in his Project Controls position and also volunteered for a number of working groups to help support his colleagues on the project, continuing to help build on our collaborative culture. He has volunteered for the early careers professionals (ECP) committee and recently led a very successful ECP event to help create a strong network across the Transpennine Route Upgrade programme. He is also part of the equality diversity and inclusion working group, a mental health first aider and has volunteered for many charity and career building events, helping pave a way for the graduates and apprentices that follow after him. Louis is an asset to the project, and I look forward to watching his career progression. Well done Louis!“
“Louis has proven to be an integral part of the Transpennine Route Update West Alliance programme; he has shown great leadership and organisation in his Early Careers Group committee position, and continuously supports our social value team in charity and career development events. Louis has recently been recognised for all his hard work and effort by winning Employee of the Period, receiving his award at our monthly team brief. I speak on behalf of the Transpennine Route Update West Alliance programme when I say he is a worthy winner of the Graduate or Newcomer of the year award.“
“In addition to excelling in his day to day role, what stands Louis apart for me is his dedication to supporting colleagues across the programme to maximise their own growth and development.
Louis has done this by taking the lead in driving the growth of the Early Careers Professional Network upon the TRU Programme. This network is intended to support Apprentices, Graduates and those new to the rail industry by helping them build their networks, learn from senior leaders in the programme first hand and develop their own skillsets through skill build workshops.
In addition to organising a number of events throughout the year, Louis' contributions in 2022 culminated in Louis leading the design and delivery of an event attended by over 100 TRU colleagues, with keynote speakers including the TRU Director, Neil Holm, which Louis organised himself.
It is not an exaggeration to state that without Louis’ personal hard work and commitment, the success of the event would have been severely compromised, if it had taken place at all. Not only did Louis take the lead in managing the small details to make the day a success, and engaged others to play their part, he also generated many of the ideas that helped shape the event. Louis also took personal responsibility for facing up to the difficult conversations that need to happen when organising such an event, and readily stepped up to the challenge to ensure the success of the event.
Witnessing Louis organising this event encapsulated Louis strengths; his meticulous attention to detail, the effort he places on preparing for all eventualities, his willingness to step up and deal with difficult situations, his interest in personally learning and developing his skills and his sheer commitment to deliver upon the high standards he sets himself.
Louis efforts have not gone unnoticed, with many members of the Senior Leadership Team sharing unsolicited positive feedback about their interactions with Louis. He is clearly a future leader within the industry.“
“Louis initial work in risk management was very cautious focussing on wording risks clearly and didn’t have the confidence in running risk reviews. Almost a year later Louis is automatously leading risk management for four project disciplines in Transpennine Route Upgrades ’s West 4 project. He competently challenges the detail in estimates and keeps up to speed which overall project progress and difficulties. His confidence has increased, and he is not fearful covering risk management at all levels.
The key challenge for a risk manager at risk reviews is to ensure you are always prepared, displaying an open and approachable nature and having the tenacity to get the data needed. Louis, as a risk assistant, does this politely and calmly. It’s been a pleasure working with him and sharing with him the commercial challenges that a risk manager faces, for example what’s in or out of scope and knowing when to capture risks at high level or get into the detail. He relishes gaining more and more knowledge and as well as demonstrating excellence in all that he does. He is the fastest learner in the area that I’ve ever worked with. I have no doubt with more time and support from all around, him he can progress to being an industry leader in whatever field he applies himself to“
“Saturday night was a great evening and we enjoyed it more than last year. The comedian was truly funny without any smut, and we all seemed to gel at the table. Our thanks to you for the hospitality and looking after us so well.”
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