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).
Mike joined the business in December 2018 in the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer heading up Rock Rail’s expanding asset management operations. Most recently he has taken up the role of Chief Originations Officer responsible for new rolling stock and rail infrastructure opportunities and fleet delivery across all markets.
With over 10 years of rail industry experience, Mike has a wealth of commercial, franchise bidding and asset delivery expertise.
Before joining Rock Mike was Franchise and Programmes Director and Deputy Managing Director for Abellio Greater Anglia leading the procurement and delivery of over 1000 new rolling stock vehicles, working closely with manufacturers to design, build and deliver modern high specification rolling stock for the passengers of Greater Anglia. Prior to this Mike was Abellio’s UK rail business development director and oversaw the successful expansion of Abellio, winning the ScotRail and Greater Anglia Franchises.
Mike’s previous roles have spanned a number of other infrastructure focussed industries across Europe and North America, including water and waste, working on the finance, structuring and development of large multidisciplinary infrastructure projects.
Charles joined Rock in July 2024. He is a chartered accountant with a background of 23 years advising on infrastructure transactions.
Charles is responsible for all financial aspects of the Rock Group, including financial strategy, group and project reporting, risk management, investor support, treasury and HR.
He sits on the Management Board and the Investment Committee.
Prior to joining Rock, Charles was a Corporate Finance partner at PwC focused on the infrastructure sector. He brings experience of project finance, M&A, capital raising and regulatory and government advice. He was the UK Transport and Logistics leader and a government relationship partner. He has worked across transport, energy transition, telecoms and social infrastructure. He has secured over £14bn of equity and debt finance for complex infrastructure transactions. He was a member of the Corporate Finance Exco responsible for People.
James joined Rock in September 2017, and is responsible for asset management activities for Rock’s owned operational fleets. James is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with over 15 years’ experience in the rail industry, predominantly in rolling stock engineering. Since joining Rock, James has been the Lessor Representative responsible for the successful delivery of the 25 new Siemens Class 717 trains that entered service on GTR’s Great Northern route in late 2018, and the 58 Stadler Flirts that were successfully introduced on the Greater Anglia franchise in 2019 and 2020. He will also take on asset management responsibility for the 90 new Class 701 Aventra units that will be introduced on the South Western franchise in 2024.
James has a detailed knowledge of UK rolling stock operations and maintenance practices, including major overhauls, engineering changes and contract management, as well as experience of the commercial and contractual arrangements associated with new train procurement and refranchising.
Prior to joining Rock, James worked for Stagecoach South Western Trains, initially in engineering management roles supporting the operation and maintenance of the South West fleets, where he was responsible for managing a team of engineers delivering a wide range of projects and modifications. James then took on 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.
Steve joined Rock in November 2017 as Commercial Director. Steve has over twenty-five years of experience in the railway industry, with a career encompassing London Underground and UK heavy rail predominantly within the rolling stock arena.
Steve has worked for train operators, rolling stock manufacturers and government agencies as a manager, project manager, adviser and engineering lead, with roles encompassing a broad range of rolling stock and commercial engineering activity. Most recently, he was the Engineering Workstream lead for the development of the rolling stock bid proposition for recent Abellio and Stagecoach group franchise bids and for the procurement and delivery of new rolling stock for the Greater Anglia franchise as Joint Project Manager for the cl.720 Bombardier Aventra build. Steve has previously managed the delivery of new trains for South Eastern trains and the design development of Intercity Express trains on behalf of Hitachi and Great Western railways, alongside the delivery of TBTC signalling and CONNECT radio communications system upgrades across the London Underground network.
Steve brings extensive practical working knowledge and experience to forge collaborative working relationships with project and industry stakeholders necessary to successfully scope, specify and deliver major projects and enhancements into revenue earning service. At Rock, Steve will be primarily taking on the Lessor Representative role for the delivery of the new Bombardier Aventra trains for the South Western 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.
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.
Since joining rock in 2022, Daniel has been working on quality assurance during the build and delivery phases of 23 new Hitachi AT300 trains for use on the West Coast Partnership franchise. His responsibilities include reviewing manufacturing, test, and comissioning documentation, conducting manufacture stage-gate and acceptance quality inspections. Ensuring the highest quality product for the West Coast Partnership.
Prior to joining Rock, Daniel worked in rolling stock engineering consultancy leading asset handback inspection projects for various rolling stock owners during franchise changes and end of lease events. Daniel also has experience as acceptance engineer on previous AT300 fleet deliveries, maintenance documentation updates and depot capacity modelling.
George joined Rock in January 2019 and has 27 years of experience in rail health, safety, risk and assurance. As Director of Health, Safety and Cyber Security, George has responsibility for: Health and Safety Management; Safety and Quality Assurance; and Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) compliance activity.
George was the Director of Safety at the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) from 2014 to 2019 where he 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. He is currently a Non-Executive Director of the Network Certification Body, Network Rail’s independent assurance subsidiary, and has been a Special Advisor on safety to National Air Traffic Services, the UK’s national air traffic control body, since 2017.
Throughout his career, George has worked on all aspects of rail risk and safety management, legislation and governance including the design and assurance of safety-critical rail systems. He is a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of both the Institute of Engineering and Technology and the Safety and Reliability Society. He is also the Visiting Professor of Railway System Safety at the Institute of Rail Research, Huddersfield.