David Plimmer

Experience

• 

  British Rail

  Jan 1990 - Jan 1994

  Technical Officer/ Senior Technical Officer

  Project management of bridge refurbishment schemes and station platform construction schemes. Project tendering, planning, execution, and commissioning.

• 

  GTRM

  Jan 1994 - Jan 1998

  Permanent way technician with additional duties to manage level crossings and longitudinally timbered structures. Project managing bridge works and refurbishment schemes.

  • Senior Technical Officer, P Way Maintenance

    Jan 1996 - Jan 1998

  • Project Manager

    Jan 1994 - Jan 1996
• 

  Law Gibb Group

  Sept 1998 - Dec 1999

  Senior Technician

  Track inspection for Railtrack Track Renewals; RE on New Street North Remodelling.

• 

  Corus Rail Consultancy Limited

  Jan 2000 - Nov 2002

  Project Manager

  Managing Gi surveys for the West Coast Main Line Upgrade, then managing development of track scope for 140mph through alignment.

• 

  Network Rail

  Nov 2002 - Jul 2017

  As a specialist in railway systems design and requirements management, I helped create the future for several railway regions in the United Kingdom in support of strategic planning. My most notable projects were Northern Powerhouse Rail, Midlands Rail Hub, Liverpool City Region, Norwich in 90, Chiltern Main Line projects and part of the Great Western railway. I worked with modelling teams to create concepts than would enable railways to give more, then scoping and analysing risk for each concept. Railways are complex and to get a business case, it has to work - you can't build things and hope. My proudest achievement was developing and presenting a programme of improvements to the West Midlands and Chilterns Working Group, improvements which now form the core of Midlands Rail Hub, part of the Midlands Connect strategy. I am proudest of this because I made a contribution to my own part of the World, something which is deeply satisfying to do. Show less

  • Senior Engineer

    Nov 2008 - Jul 2017

  • Specification Engineer

    Apr 2005 - Nov 2008

  • Track Construction Engineer Crewe

    Nov 2002 - Apr 2005
• 

  HS2 (High Speed Two) Ltd

  Jul 2017 - now

  I lead a small team who specify requirements and assure VVMs for all Civil Engineering, station and major facilities projects for one of Europe's largest construction programmes. We are a part of the Systems Integration team in HS2 and achieving integrated outcomes starts with us. On something so big and complex as HS2, there are no half measures.I manage a significant proportion of our requirement layers, from stakeholder at layer A, through system requirements at level B , subsystem requirements at level C and contracts at Level D. When our contractors provide us with assurance data, it is in the form of Verification and Validation and my team review this to ensure it is as contractually agreed.I also have the job of managing top level requirements with major stakeholders, including National Highways and Network Rail. The Network Rail piece includes my working as part of a virtual team from SI and HS2 Rail Systems to develop the requirement spec and integrated outcome for where two railway systems meet to enable seamless operation. If you do requirements properly, you enable integrated outcomes. If you don't, you can't integrate anything. Show less My work as part of the development of HS2 includes the following fields:- Our contract with Government and the breakdown to Programme Requirements- Programme Requirements and the breakdown to contractsMy programme requirements work includes integrating the following:- Rail systems compatibility- Rail systems capability- Rail systems capacity- Operational concept and sub concepts- The Design Vision and subsequent strategies- Customer experienceSome of these areas of endeavour have never been done (or done correctly) in UK rail, so I am hoping one day to have the opportunity to share what I have learned. Show less

  • Senior Requirements Manager at HS2 (High Speed Two) Ltd

    May 2023 - now

  • Civil Engineering Requirements Manager

    Jun 2020 - May 2023

  • Requirements Engineer

    Jul 2017 - May 2020