John Wardell - Senior Associate

John Wardell has wide experience of the railway telecommunications industry at the highest level having been a member of the BR Telecoms start-up team holding the important post of Operations Director. His leadership saw a disparate workforce of 3,400 people with loyalties to past regional and area organisations melded into a cohesive team capable of meeting the demanding service level agreements demanded by the contracts set-up as part of the privatisation process.

 Once BRT had been sold to Racal, John continued in the operational directorate role and in the period after 1997 Racal-BRT committed substantial expenditure to updating the overall architecture of the railway telecoms network, which included the modernisation of the operator service function into a modern centralised structure.

 With the division of Racal-BRT and subsequent sale of the Fieldforce Division to Thales, John occupied the position of Managing Director from 1997 to 2001 where he led the substantial operational workforce to meet the service level needs of the operational railway and the provision of retail and business telecom services.

 In his earlier career John had worked with Kingston communications becoming their Head of Network Services. In this role he was closely associated with the award winning first all digital communications network in Europe which required the negotiating and forging of a successful inter-connect agreement with British Telecom. 

Most recently a consultancy practice has been established where advice has been given on the implementation of the railways’ GSM (R) digital radio network.