Tony O’Toole’s journey from rolling stock testing to managing director for rail

How wanting to be at the forefront has shaped Tony O’Toole’s career in the rail sector and his views on the future

Talk to Mott MacDonald managing director for rail Tony O’Toole about his work for a while and it soon becomes clear that it is an industry he loves. However, it is not just the projects the sector delivers and the connectivity it creates he has a passion for, it is the people who work in the industry that matter to him too.

In discussing his career, Tony frequently name checks individuals who supported him to progress and often adds a backstory or anecdote about them, even for those he worked with 30 years ago.

Although he started out with a degree in electrical controls and systems engineering from Sheffield University that helped lead him into engineering roles, Tony confesses to a side interest in psychology. This is where his interest in people, as well as projects, comes from.

“I love helping people around me succeed and it gives me a real buzz”

“I love helping people around me succeed and it gives me a real buzz,” he says and it is clearly one of the reasons why he has enjoyed the last few years in his current role at Mott MacDonald. However, it is the variety of roles he has held through working for different organisations in the rail sector over his career that has positioned him well to support both Mott MacDonald’s clients and his 400-strong team to succeed.

The current focus for his team is on major projects including East West Rail, the Midlands Rail Hub, Northern Powerhouse Rail, electrification in Scotland, work for Irish Rail and, of course, HS2.

Nonetheless, Tony’s move into the rail sector only came about by chance.

Testing role

After graduating in 1995, the UK was in the middle of a recession and the job market was challenging, so Tony took a job behind the bar in the Stockland Inn in Birmingham. It was one of the regulars, who worked in the test department at nearby rolling stock manufacturer Alstom, who told Tony about recruitment for a role there.

“Next thing you know I was working in my overalls in the test department,” he says. “The role involved following procedures under the guidance of other people but I enjoyed the practical aspect of the work. My degree was very academic and maths based but the work at Alstom suited my learning style perfectly.”

However, he had an aspiration to move into engineering and didn’t have to wait long to make that become a reality. Alstom set up a test and development department to serve its rolling stock contracts for the Arlanda Express in Sweden, the Jubilee Line Extension and Pendolinos for the West Coast Main Line. This gave Tony his break into engineering and he worked on setting up the test procedures before the trains left the factory and later took on responsibility for the brake systems.

Tony says he learned a lot about managing stress during this period. “It was quite tough,” he adds. To underline the critical nature of his work, he explains the time pressure to sign off the brake systems on the new Pendolino train before it first came into service in 2002.

“The Queen was due to travel on a Pendolino to open the Commonwealth Games in Manchester but a few weeks beforehand the brakes had not been signed off to go into full passenger service. There was an interim certificate but to get full sign off, I needed to lead the team on undertaking modifications and retesting. I had to make that happen and, as a 26-year-old, that was quite a lot of pressure,” Tony says. “But we did it.” Tony believes he learned a lot about leadership through this process and also saw how stressful phases can be managed if you are working in a supportive environment, which is something he has aimed to create for others as his career has progressed.

Moving into consultancy

Sadly, his engineering career at Alstom was brought to a halt a few years later when the factory closed. “While I could have found a job elsewhere in the business, it wouldn’t have been doing the type of work that I found inspiring,” he says. However, another chance conversation led him to Mott MacDonald soon after the news broke about the factory closure.

“A recruitment consultant called me to say that Mott MacDonald was building a rolling stock team in Derby and they only had five people at that point, so this was a chance to help develop the business,” says Tony. “I enjoy being at the forefront, which was why my role at Alstom had given me career satisfaction and ‘getting in early’ with Mott MacDonald as the recruitment consultant described it to me appealed.”

The rolling stock team had grown to 45 when Tony moved to take on the technical lead role for the East London Line in 2005 where he supported on developing the technical specification for the rolling stock and supported on the contract award. “This gave me insight into the legal side of the industry and my first experience of procurement,” he adds.

The East London Line experience led to Tony taking on first the senior engineer role and later the technical lead role for the Intercity Express Programme. Initially he worked within Mott MacDonald and supported on the interface between Network Rail and the Department for Transport (DfT) but, as the work progressed, he was effectively seconded into DfT.

He believes that this experience of working client side has been invaluable in supporting his team in Mott MacDonald to deliver better outcomes.

Understanding the client’s challenge

“It is fascinating to see how the civil service works from the inside and understand the challenge from a different perspective,” he says. “Often the private sector is critical of the public sector – and vice versa – but the reality is that they are both doing an enormously challenging job, just coming at it from different angles with different constraints and different pressures.

“As an industry we would do so much better by moving people around and seconding people between the public and private sector so that they can understand the other side. Recognising the pressures on both sides, from a collaboration perspective, is absolutely essential to moving the rail industry forward. It will really help us know what the client wants and needs and how we can best help them get there by thinking differently, rather than focusing on the problems.

“There are some fabulous and dedicated people right across the rail industry – in the public and private sector – who are doing extremely pressured jobs under extremely pressured circumstances.”

Delivering incremental improvements

Trying to support the industry to change is one of Tony’s ambitions over the coming decades so that by the time the sector reaches its 250th anniversary, there will have been a true modernisation in how the railways are planned, delivered and operated.

“We need to focus on improving efficiency and greater use of digital technology but that is not easy – we have an old network and a very regulated system,” he explains. “It is hard to do things differently when you are under pressure to deliver and there are programme constraints to manage.

“However, we need to look at how we produce a design and how we get it through the process and make incremental improvements on every project. As a consultancy we have a responsibility to contribute to improving delivery and create a comfortable and trusting environment where we can challenge clients to change, while also understanding their constraints.” Tony has clearly thrived on the opportunities the rail sector has offered him over the past three decades and does not regret taking a decision based on a conversation in a pub. But he also believes that the same opportunity to be at the forefront still exists for those joining the “railway family” today too and is optimistic about the future of the rail sector in the UK.