EXPERT COMMENTARY

NICK MILLINGTON MBE - ROUTE DIRECTOR, WALES AND BORDERS ROUTE

Nick Millington, Network Rail’s Wales and Borders Route Director, was awarded an MBE in the 2023 New Years Honours list for services to the railway, charity, and the NHS. In his 30-year career he has worked across the industry, led multidisciplinary engineering teams, and driven significant programmes of business change. Throughout his career, Nick has displayed a strong commitment to the safety of rail workers and for this reason RailStaff caught up with him to discuss his career and contribution to health, safety, and wellbeing.

Thanks for joining us, Nick. To get started, could you give us a brief outline of your career to date and tell us what attracted you to the rail industry?

I was always interested in transport – trains, planes, cars, you name it. When I was young, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, but I remember I did want to be a chartered engineer. My dad was keen for me to go to university, but I wasn’t so eager at the time, although I did go later in my career.

I remember when I was 15, my mother’s friend came around to the house with a newspaper and pointed out an advert for apprenticeships with British Rail. I applied, and two weeks after I turned 16, I started working on traction, rolling stock and engineers’ plant. I then spent around 10-12 years as a site engineer in mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering before moving into asset management. I was part of a team that introduced high output track renewal machinery and all the equipment. That was around 2004 to 2007. During 2007/8, I worked on the Reading Station redevelopment programme and, after that, moved back to track renewals and enhancements, where I stayed until 2012. After working on infrastructure projects from 2012 to 2013, I became the national track renewals director of safety and assurance, before becoming a project director on railway infrastructure projects. For a year, in 2016, I was the chief of staff for Network Rail, working for Mark Carne, CEO. Following that, I became route infrastructure maintenance director for the Western Route. After we lost two workers at Margam, in south Wales, I was asked to lead the national track worker ‘Safety Task Force’. Since June 2022, I’ve been Route Director for the Wales and Borders Route.