Mark founded Rock Rail in 2014, having established sister company Rock Infrastructure in 2011, following a highly successful career in law at Clifford Chance (10 years) and DLA Piper (18 years).

Mark has over 35 years of experience working in the City of London, New York and Europe. For the last 28 years, he has specialised in developing innovative funding, financing and procurement strategies for major infrastructure projects, working to ensure the alignment of public and private sector interests and to deliver substantially improved public sector value for money.

Since founding Rock Rail, Mark has led the business in securing £3 billion of institutional investment into new passenger rolling stock for UK rail franchises. He is a director for the companies established to finance and lease each of Rock Rail’s fleets to the rail franchises.

Under Rock Infrastructure, Mark was Commercial Director on the landmark Mersey Gateway Bridge Project and principal advisor on the transformation of CAE’s helicopter training facility PPP.

As a lawyer, Mark created and led DLA Piper’s Commercial and Projects Group and in 2007 became Global Head of DLA’s Infrastructure and Defence Sector.

Matthew has over 18 years of experience of the infrastructure sector.

Since joining Rock in 2011, Matthew has played a leading role in the negotiation of the commercial aspects of all of Rock’s fleet.  He also played a lead role in the procurement and delivery of the Mersey Gateway Bridge PPP, which successfully opened in October 2017. In January 2020, Matthew started as Rock’s Head of Compliance and Risk to support the successful delivery of Rock’s fleets and later that year became Rock’s Chief Investment Officer.

Matthew has acted as a deal principal, financial advisor, a joint lead arranger and bookrunner and a legal advisor on infrastructure projects which gives him a unique perspective and insight into how to structure a project to bring it to a successful conclusion.

Matthew has specialized in PPP across all sectors from roads, parking and airports to the healthcare and education sectors, both in the UK, Europe and North America.

Prior to joining Rock, Matthew worked as a Vice President in the Royal Bank of Scotland’s infrastructure finance group (in New York) and was an Associate in DLA Piper’s commercial and projects team (in London).

James joined Rock in September 2017. He is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with over 10 years’ experience working within the rail industry, predominantly within the rolling stock engineering field. He brings a working knowledge of UK rolling stock operations and maintenance practices, including heavy overhauls, engineering changes and contract management, and has recent experience of the commercial and contractual arrangements associated with new trains procurement and refranchising.

James has previously worked for Stagecoach South Western Trains, initially in engineering management roles to support the operation and maintenance of the South West fleets where he was responsible for leading a team of engineers delivering a wide range of projects and modifications, and interfacing with the relevant ROSCOs. Subsequently James has undertaken roles in the Stagecoach franchise bidding and mobilisation teams including responsibility for the procurement of new rolling stock for the future franchise and the development of the rolling stock strategy.

At Rock, James is the Lessor Representative responsible for the successful delivery of the 25 new Siemens Class 717 trains entering service on GTR’s Great Northern route late 2018 to early 2019 and for the 58 Stadler Flirts due to enter service from 2019 on the Greater Anglia franchise.

Kishan is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with over 7 years rail experience in various companies within the rail industry. He gained his Masters in Aeronautical Engineering at Queen Mary University of London. Kishan uses his background in operational rail to implement effective solutions to problems using his analytical and problem-solving skills. He can express a broad range of technical skills, personal effectiveness, leadership skills and use rigorous logic and methods to produce solutions to difficult problems.

He began working at Greater Anglia as a graduate engineer where he developed his proficiency through managing the operational engineering of legacy stocks. Kishan enabled GA to seamlessly introduce the new class 720 whilst cascading out the legacy fleet whilst maintaining operational capacity. This included risk assessments, producing relevant engineering changes and improvement of performance and reliability. His main role included delay attribution to determine root cause and financial liability using industry standard tools.

Kishan then took on the role of senior reliability consultant at Arup. He took on large scale projects including HS2 and Cross Rail. He facilitated workshops with clients, stakeholders and multidisciplined engineers where he ensured full management and delivery of projects while ensuring the development and management of strategic client relationships.

In September 2022, Kishan started at Rock Rail as a Fleet Manager. He brings great knowledge of old and new fleets and is responsible for the management of the key engineering tasks involved with introducing and maintaining new fleets. He oversees the day-to-day engineering, asset management and financial acumen of Rock’s current and future fleets.

Jake joined Rock in June 2022 after gaining over 8 years of experience in the commercial vehicle sector with a focus on electrification systems. Jake has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering bringing extensive knowledge of lithium-ion battery systems and will be primarily supporting Rock Road with a focus on battery and asset performance.

Jake previously worked at Cummins New Power Business unit, based in both the UK and US, leading the global marketing and sales function for battery development across high and low voltage lithium-ion batteries. Jake will use his expertise to lead on the asset management of our zero-emission bus fleets and track global trends in the supply chain to ensure that our assumptions are aligned with the development of bus and battery technology.

Sue started with Rock Rail as Commercial Manager in September 2020, having been consulting for the company since March 2020.  Sue is primarily managing the project to deliver the new Hitachi Intercity trains for the West Coast Partnership.

Sue is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with a Masters degree in Transport and nearly 30 years in the railway industry.  Sue’s career has included working for London Underground and UK heavy rail in the rolling stock arena with a career covering project management, maintenance reviews, project engineering, testing of new trains and contract management.

Since starting her career at London Underground, Sue has worked for a ROSCO as Fleet Manager, overseeing maintenance changes, refranchising, refurbishments and managing heavy maintenance. Most recently Sue has been contracting and worked as the Rolling Stock Lead for the Operator of Last Resort and managed a project to develop the concept design for a go-anywhere locomotive. As a consultant she has also supported several franchise bids and worked for Greater Anglia franchise as Joint Project Manager for the Class 720 Bombardier Aventra build as well as Testing Manager for Rock Rail’s Stadler Class 755 and 745 fleets.

George joined Rock in January 2019. His role as Director of Health, Safety and Cyber Security covers Rock Rail’s asset management activities and other business operations. George has responsibility for all aspects of Rock Rail’s Safety Management Systems including safety assurance responsibilities for all fleets under its management. He has 25 years of experience in the health and safety arena.

George was previously the Director of System Safety and Health at the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) where he was responsible for RSSB’s work to support the rail industry in all aspects of its health and safety management and assurance processes and capabilities. George also played a key role in the setting of the national rail health and safety strategy and in delivering associated programmes, including sponsoring the successful relaunch of the national supplier qualification scheme, RISQS.

Prior to his work at RSSB he worked as a consultant on safety assurance of complex safety critical systems, following previous roles in the railway supply sector designing rail systems.

George has a PhD in Computer Science, specialising in railway risk modelling and is a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of the Safety and Reliability Society. He is the Visiting Professor of Railway System Safety at the Institute of Rail Research, Huddersfield.

Jo joined the team in April 2018 with over 20 years of experience in the leasing industry most recently focussing on the rolling stock market. Jo is responsible for all financial aspects of Rock Rail’s asset management services and capabilities for its current and future asset management portfolio. Prior to joining Rock Jo headed up the Financial Control and Risk team at ROSCO Eversholt Rail group for three years. In this position she was responsible for finance activities on its portfolio of Passenger and Freight rolling stock assets, Cross London Trains and the onboarding of new shareholders following a private equity exit.

Nick joined Rock in January 2017. He brings over twenty years of experience in the railway industry in both the UK and mainland Europe, with a particular focus on the rolling stock market.

Nick’s career includes two executive roles at major rolling stock manufacturers. Firstly at Hitachi Rail Europe, where he was responsible for the sales, commercial and strategic planning activities of Hitachi’s rail business in both the UK and Europe. He developed, led and implemented Hitachi Rail Europe’s early new business strategy for mainland Europe including senior level engagement with SJ (Sweden), SBB (Switzerland) and DB (Germany). More recently Nick was UK Sales Director and a member of the Executive Management Team at Siemens Rail Systems with responsibility for overall Sales performance of the Rail Systems Division in the UK.

Prior to this Nick worked for the ROSCO HSBC Rail (now Eversholt Rail Group) for nearly ten years in a number of roles. He held overall responsibility for all activities relating to its portfolio of Intercity and Freight rolling stock assets, including relationship management, engineering and project management.

Since joining Rock, Nick’s activities have included being asset and project management lead for Rock on both the Moorgate Class 717 and the Greater Anglia Class 745 and Class 755 trains. Currently, Nick is dedicated to Rock’s engagement with Mainland Europe, leading business development activities in the German and, more recently, the French markets.

Nick brings with him a comprehensive knowledge of the UK and European rolling stock market and will support Rock Rail’s business development and asset management capabilities as it continues to grow its rolling stock portfolio.

Joined Rock March 2022