When Mark Wild took over as Chief Executive of Crossrail Ltd in late 2018 one of his first moves was to halt, and then reverse, the reduction in key people working on the project. With a then quoted opening date of December 2018 the assumption had been that it made sense to let staff go given that their roles would become obsolete once the new railway opened.
As we now know, with the opening of the Elizabeth Line still a year or more away, this was premature. Mr Wild set about rebuilding the company’s human resources, appointing more people to check off work and focus on what still needed doing. This strategy has culminated in the promotion of Crossrail’s Mark Cooper to the new role of Chief Projects Officer and the top-level signing of Jim Crawford from HS2 Ltd to the newly created post of Chief Programme Officer.
The appointments reflect Mark Wild’s preoccupation with the systems integration side of Crossrail, the complexity of which appears to have been underestimated by the previous Crossrail management, which is critical to getting the railway open. As reported last month, 2020 for Crossrail is all about trial running – the process which will see multiple trains operating in tunnels to simulate …
