Spotlight Series: Meet Perry Ramsey

For our latest Spotlight series, we sat down with Perry Ramsey, Managing Director at TransportWorks, the consultancy arm of Transport UK. In the last two years, TransportWorks has built a reputation for supporting train operating companies and bus operations with interim management and specialist advisory services across operations, customer experience, finance, and engineering. With projects spanning from UK train to bus introductions, the team combines trusted expertise with global experience. Perry reflects on the opportunities in technological innovation, the challenges of a shifting rail landscape, and how TransportWorks’ collaborative, people-first approach is helping deliver reliable outcomes for clients.

Can you give us an overview of your TransportWork’s role within the wider Transport UK group, and the types of clients you support?

TransportWorks is the consultancy arm of Transport UK, created after the management buyout from Abellio UK two years ago. We support train operating companies with interim management and provide expert advisory across operations, customer experience, finance, and engineering. We also work across other parts of the transport sector. Our associates are experienced professionals from across the world who we know and trust, ensuring reliable outcomes.

What types of projects do you look to consult on?

We focus on high-level rail projects such as new train and bus introductions. We support with commissioning, testing, and service launch. We also provide resources for demobilisation when operators hand back to government, as well as mobilisation support for incoming teams.

How does your team collaborate with other parts of the group, and what benefits does that integration bring to your clients?

We work closely with Transport UK’s executive team, sharing insight from their decades of experience across operators. Our integrated offering allows us to compete fairly through open tendering. Collaboration allows us to integrate expertise across infrastructure, operations, and back-office support, giving clients comprehensive solutions.

UK Transport is undergoing rapid change, from decarbonisation to digital transformation and now nationalisation. What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for the UK rail industry?

The biggest opportunities lie in technological innovation, such as driverless trains, European Train Control System (ETCS), Level 2 signalling, which involves continuous supervision of train movement with constant communication between the train and trackside, and large-scale new train introductions. These changes create demand for expertise in testing, commissioning, and operational support, especially as industry experience is lost through retirements. The challenge will be bridging that knowledge gap while ensuring reliable delivery of projects. At the same time, nationalisation and market shifts open space for consultancies like ours to provide specialist skills, deep expertise and continuity.

Which opportunities for growth are you most excited about for Transport UK in the next few years?

It's a very exciting time at Transport UK. We're seeing significant opportunities to expand even further across the UK, particularly in Liverpool and Yorkshire, where devolved powers are enabling new partnerships with local Mayors to operate and maintain high-quality bus operations. These are significant growth areas for us, where we can work across multiple aspects of the transport sector to deliver world-class services.

Tell us about your journey. What brought you to the rail sector?

I joined the rail industry in 1980 as a train driver before moving into management as a driver manager, then operations manager. I later became route and operations director for ScotRail, and led major new train introductions for Abellio in the UK. My career also took me abroad, including four years as operations director in Melbourne and four years in Saudi Arabia. Following my time abroad, I returned to the UK to head up TransportWorks within Transport UK.

You’ve held senior roles across major operators worldwide and led on projects ranging from new train introductions to ETCS deployment. Looking back, what project or initiative are you most proud of?

There are many projects I’m proud of. Highlights were delivering the electrification and new train introduction between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which was complex but successful; uniting Saudi Arabia’s three railways under one state-owned company with a single safety case; and improving performance in Melbourne by adding 30% more services and raising reliability to 94%. My work in Saudi has prepared me to support UK operators as they transition to Great British Railways once they receive their expiry notices.

More recently, building TransportWorks from a standing start into a business turning over more than £1 million a year is something I’m very proud of.

What leadership lessons have stayed with you, and how do you approach motivating and empowering teams to deliver excellent performance?

For me, trust is crucial. It’s about being contactable and maintaining an open-door policy. This will help reduce surprises, to allow you to deal with issues early. This also includes not being afraid to give people bad news. I also would never ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t do myself. I make recognition a priority, whether through formal reward or simply saying thank you. Keeping leadership simple and authentic is what gets the best from people. I share these philosophies with Dominic Booth, Transport UK’s CEO, who I’ve worked on and off with for over 30 years. We bring this leadership style to all the work we do through TransportWorks.