Lizzie joined WSP as a Level 4 apprentice in 2017 and has progressed to design manager on the Dublin MetroLink Tunnels Package, achieving a First-Class BEng in 2024 and completing her End Point Assessment in 2025. On MetroLink she coordinated a multidisciplinary team spanning more than fifteen technical disciplines across Switzerland, the UK and Ireland, and met every project milestone.

She prepared and chaired eighteen interdisciplinary checks and reviews — far more than her peers — and the format she developed was subsequently adopted by other design teams as the template for the programme. She was trusted to present technical overviews to senior WSP leadership in Dublin and to produce engineering summaries for the client's communications team.

Beyond the project, she mentors apprentices and graduates, acts as buddy to incoming cohorts, and represents engineering in schools outreach — using her own route into the industry to show that it isn't only the traditional one.

A partnership supporting one of Ireland's most ambitious rail transformation programmes, delivering three strategic outputs for the national network: a comprehensive network-wide Infrastructure Assessment, a long-term Decarbonisation Strategy, and a Funding Strategy to underpin future investment. The nomination's core is how it was delivered — a collaborative model that broke down client-consultant barriers, with both organisations working as one team, collective ownership of decisions, and Irish Rail's operational insight combined with Mott MacDonald's international rail expertise. The entry describes a culture of trust, shared successes and collectively-owned challenges across engineering, operations, signalling, telecoms, digital and stakeholder disciplines — and lasting value: a stronger evidence base for investment decisions, a practical pathway to a lower-carbon railway, and a credible funding framework for the network's modernisation.

The Hazard Management Tool (HMT) Team — RSK Rail safety specialists, software developers, digital engineers and business development professionals who came together to solve one of safety assurance's oldest problems: hazard management scattered across spreadsheets, documents and email chains. Their answer is the Hazard Management Tool — a secure, cloud-based platform providing a single source of truth for hazards across the CSM-RA lifecycle: live hazard registers, full audit trails, action ownership and evidence management in one collaborative environment. Developed with the industry rather than for it, HMT has been demonstrated to organisations including Network Rail, RSSB, Siemens, Amey, AtkinsRéalis, AmcoGiffen, Iarnród Éireann and Translink — with a Network Rail trial in preparation and discussions ongoing on wider adoption across Ireland. A team from different disciplines, working as one, to help the industry spend more time managing risk and less time managing paperwork.

The Railway Club Ambassador Team are not paid employees and do not represent a single organisation. They are professionals from across the rail sector — infrastructure, contracting, consultancy, manufacturing and specialist services — who give their own time because they believe the industry is stronger when people are connected and supported.

Over the past year the team has been instrumental in growing The Railway Club into one of the industry's fastest-growing networking communities, delivering regional events, flagship gatherings and the launch of TRC Ireland, and creating opportunities for hundreds of professionals to build relationships beyond their own organisations.

Their contribution goes well beyond attending. They welcome new members, introduce people who would otherwise never have met, mentor those new to the industry, handle event planning and logistics, and make sure every attendee feels part of it.

They do this around demanding full-time careers, often travelling significant distances. Despite working for different businesses, they operate as one team — and in doing so have helped build a culture where collaboration is valued above competition and organisations of every size engage on equal terms.

The Siemens Mobility Computer-Based Interlocking (CBI) Framework with Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail) represents a landmark, long-term programme to modernise Ireland’s rail network through the deployment of next-generation digital signalling and integrated control systems.

Structured as a 25-year partnership, the contract will see the phased replacement of legacy interlocking technology, much of which dates back to the 1980s, with Siemens’ Trackguard Westlock CBI system, delivering a future-proofed, software-driven signalling architecture across the national network. The programme is not simply a technology upgrade, it is a step-change in how rail infrastructure is delivered and operated in Ireland.

By combining modern digital interlocking with existing infrastructure and interfaces, Siemens and Irish Rail have created a scalable and resilient system that can evolve alongside future technologies such as European Train Control System (ETCS) and advanced traffic management systems. A key enabler of success has been the collaborative, one-team approach established from the outset.

Early in the contract, Siemens and Irish Rail undertook a dedicated team-building exercise to align objectives, build trust, and foster an integrated delivery culture between organisations. This foundation has underpinned rapid mobilisation of the framework and strong progress across design, integration, and early deployment activities.

Together, this 25-year CBI programme is transforming Ireland’s railway into a modern, digitally-enabled transport system, delivering long-term operational efficiency, improved customer outcomes, and a platform for sustainable growth for generations to come.

Éamonn's career spans almost fifty years of the Irish network.

He began as a young engineer on the original DART project, which broke ground in 1979 and opened in 1984, and went on to lead much of the modernisation that followed.

As project manager he delivered the Connolly-to-border section of the Dublin–Belfast upgrade, including the renewal of some thirty bridges; the Maynooth line re-doubling; the redevelopment of Heuston Station and its four new platforms; the DART upgrade; and Phase I of the Kildare Route Project, the largest civil engineering project undertaken by Iarnród Éireann in the greater Dublin area in recent times. He was Chief Civil Engineer from 2009, with responsibility for track and structures across the entire network, and has been Director of Infrastructure since 2021.

A Chartered Civil Engineer, Fellow of Engineers Ireland and MBA graduate of the University of Limerick, he has consistently brought new technology into Irish practice — the introduction of rail milling with Linsinger among them — and built the delivery teams that have carried programme after programme.