Andy Free

Regional Head of Engineering & Assurance at Network Rail

West Midlands, England, United Kingdom

About

An experienced Engineering Manager with a strong commercial awareness developed over 30 years working in rail projects at all levels. Project roles have included design, testing, project engineering, project management, and signal engineering specialist roles. Recent experience includes the leadership of multi-disciplinary project delivery teams, delivering major asset renewal and network enhancements as well 2 years in asset management. This has included managing organisational change to enhance performance and the formation and development of new teams to support new programmes of work. Chartered Engineer Member of the Institution of Engineering & Technology Fellow of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers

Experience

  • Network Rail (20 yrs 11 mos)
    • Retired (for now!)
      Oct 2024 - Present · 1 yr 9 mos

    • Regional Head of Engineering & Assurance
      Mar 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 4 mos

      Within NW&C Region of NR, my role is to develop and maintain product and designed system safety and reliability, project approvals, design quality assurance and systems engineering throughout the Region's Engineering and Asset Management organisation to enable inherently safe, consistent and efficient engineering.

    • Senior Programme Engineering Manager
      Jan 2020 - Jan 2024 · 4 yrs 1 mo

      Within the North West & Central Region Director of Safety & Engineering team, I provide engineering leadership spanning between our client engineers in the Routes & Region and our delivery engineers in Capital Delivery & Route Services. In this role, I am accountable for and my team provide Engineering Leadership, 2nd line (functionally independent) Engineering Assurance, set Competence Expectations and provide Capability Growth as well as undertaking special projects to improve the application of company processes at and Enterprise level.

  • Head of Engineering Assurance at EWR Alliance
    Nov 2015 - Jan 2020 · 4 yrs 3 mos

    Following the formation of the EWR Alliance to develop and deliver the East West Rail phase 2 project, I took the role of Head of Engineering Assurance to support the Engineering Function leading a small team providing specialist support in developing the Alliance Assurance processes, Requirements Management, Engineering Safety Management and Assurance evidence collation.

  • Principal Consultant at Lloyds Register Rail
    Sep 2001 - Aug 2005 · 4 yrs

    Consultant Engineer working on signalling projects for a range of clients across the UK undertaking feasibility, design, project engineering, asset management and engineering assurance roles.