Independent Investment Programme Advisory Group

TfL IIPAG

Members are:

Alison Munro (Chair)

Alison was the first Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd, from 2009, and then Managing Director for Phase Two of HS2. Her previous career was largely in the Department for Transport, where she held a number of senior positions including leading strategic roads policy, local authority capital investment funding, sponsorship of HS1, preparation of transport elements of the GLA Act, and airports policy.

Alison is also a Non-Executive Director of Ofwat (the Water Services Regulator), and the Chair of Ofwat's Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. She is also the Chair of the National College for High Speed Rail. She is a strategic advisor to HS2 Ltd.

Alison was appointed CBE in 2017 for services to the railway industry.

Liz Baker

Liz has 20 years' experience in the delivery of major infrastructure and rail projects. She is a Non-Executive Director with the NHS, member of the Harlow Growth Board, and works as an independent consultant advising public and private-sector clients. Formerly a Director of Sponsorship with Network Rail, she was also the Lead Sponsor for Euston Station on behalf of the Department for Transport, and later for High Speed 2 Ltd.

Liz is passionate about the positive and transformative impact that capital projects can have on places and people. She has broad project experience including in commercial management, stakeholder management, sponsorship, risk and programme controls. Her experience spans projects such as Crossrail, Thameslink, East London Line, High Speed 2, HMRC Borders Programme and Havant Thicket Reservoir.

Liz is a qualified Civil Engineer, Construction Law professional and Mediator.

Simon Blanchflower

Simon retired from his role as CEO of the East West Railway Company in March 2022, having successfully established the company and secured funding for the first stage of the project connecting Oxford and Milton Keynes. He had joined EWR after a long career leading the development and delivery of major rail infrastructure projects including being the Major Programme Director on the Thameslink Programme. This complex project involved the re-building of London Bridge station, extensive railway systems work and the first in class deployment of digital railway technology.

Simon is now doing a range of non-executive and strategic advisory work, both within the rail sector and outside of it. He's the Deputy Chair of the London Legacy Development Corporation which is responsible for securing the legacy from the London 2012 Olympics. This includes the creation of new residential developments and a cultural and education district in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. He chairs their Health, Safety & Security and Investment Committees. He also sits on the Board of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation and the Global Centre of Rail Excellence.

He was appointed CBE in 2019 for services to the railway industry and is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Simon Collins

Simon is a chartered civil and structural engineer with over 35 years of experience in the management, design and construction of transport infrastructure projects in both highways and rail. Specialising originally in the design of bridges and structures, his career has also included tunnel design and maintenance, and the development of systems for whole-life costing and the long-term prediction of asset condition and performance.

Before joining IIPAG he spent his career in engineering consultancies, including Mouchel, Sinclair Knight Merz and Jacobs, where he was responsible for the development and direction of consultancy businesses operating across a areas including multi-disciplinary design, asset management and project delivery. He has also worked in other countries including Turkey, Kuwait and Russia.

As an external expert to TfL he has supported several integrated assurance reviews of programmes and projects.

Enrique Fernandez-Pino

Enrique has more than 30 years' experience designing and delivering Digital Transformation in large corporations such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco. A trained lawyer, he discovered project work very early in his career and decided to specialise in bringing about business change through technology. For four years he was Head of Programme in Tesco Property, a programme of work quoted by the FT as the largest build programme in Europe, excluding public infrastructure. More recently, he was Group CIO for the Go-Ahead Group, one of the top operators of public transport in the UK and a FTSE 250 company at the time, and Global CIO for Chubb, the fire and security firm.

From early 2020 Enrique has been working as an independent consultant and interim CIO and Transformation Director, providing advisory services to companies within the public transport industry, as well as the manufacturing and services sectors.

Phil Threlfall

Phil is a Chartered Engineer with 40 years of experience working in the railway sector on some of the world's most high profile projects. He's enjoyed a varied career with Westinghouse spending extended periods of time working on projects in Asia and then London. His experience and responsibilities spanned both the technical, commercial, budgetary and delivery aspects of major complex projects.

He was later a Board Member and the Technical Director for Siemens Rail UK, and prior to that a Board member and Technical Director for Invensys Rail. In these roles he was responsible for leading the technical and organisational direction of the business, through innovation and change management.

He now runs an independent consulting business and has advised the Executive management teams within both TfL and Network Rail Digital Rail Programme. He was also engaged as an advisor on the complex Crossrail/Elizabeth line software-based signalling system.

Joanne White

Joanne has spent her entire career in large scale, complex, strategic infrastructure development and delivery both internationally and domestically. She is an experienced manager of multi-billion pound programmes and has worked as both a contractor and an owner.

For a large part of her career, Joanne worked for the Bechtel Corporation mostly in oil and gas and civil investment projects and programmes. She has worked as a procurement and contracts manager and has led large multi-cultural construction organisations overseas. Joanne also worked for Heathrow Airport as the Programme Director for its new Terminal 2 during the main development and delivery period.

Joanne ran her own consultancy for several years providing high level advice to boards and senior executives and was a regular high risk project reviewer for the UK Government Infrastructure Projects Authority.

TTLP (Transport Trading Limited Properties) IIPAG sub-group

Members are:

Ray Christopher

Ray has had a career in corporate finance across many sectors including energy, high-tech and real estate. He sits on the board of a housing association and chairs their treasury committee.

For 10 years he led the development finance team at a large London housing association, co-chaired the investment committee and raised over £10bn in the bond and bank capital markets financing the construction of over 10,000 affordable and private homes across London and the South East.

Ray has worked with several companies on creating public private joint ventures to increase housing output for mixed-use, mixed-tenure regeneration projects and attracting long term investment. He currently advises a company creating digital machine-learning solutions for remote asset management and monitoring of property portfolios to improve building efficiency and the health and safety and wellbeing of tenants.

Peter Cornforth

Peter has spent over 30 years in the real estate investment and development industry and currently holds a range of business appointments, including as a senior advisor to global investment house PineBridge Benson Elliot. Most recently he was Director of Retail at European private equity fund Benson Elliot, managing a multi-asset investment portfolio and delivering on a large scale residential development pipeline. He is a Chartered Valuation Surveyor, holds a BSc in Land Management and is a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts.

Peter is also a Trustee and finance committee member at Ormiston Trust, a 52 school/32,000 pupil education provider, and has previously held non-executive/audit committee roles at two London social housing providers, has chaired an NHS mental health Trust, and been vice-chair of the National Autistic Society, having joined as a volunteer parent member.

Derek Williams

Derek trained and qualified as a chartered surveyor and following the completion of a Masters qualification focused his career on real estate strategy and fund management. Derek helped shape Land Securities' research and analytical tools in the early 2000s. From there he worked in global fund management in both the UK and USA, heading up four teams over a 18 year real estate investment career. Derek helped grow a residential business focussed on student accommodation from 2016-2020, leading the largest residential transaction in Europe in 2016 as well as setting up investment management and capital raising functions in Europe.

Derek has raised and deployed (either as a principal or advisor) circa USD8bn of capital over his career, to date. This has been invested across real estate and private market strategies in the USA, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Derek has served and chaired investment committees, management and company boards alongside various real estate industry initiatives and publications. He also holds a non-executive advisory role at consultancy Redington.

IIPAG reports