IPEX is delighted to announce that as part of the establishment of an Australian arm of our business, Chris Hoskin, one of our long-standing Company Directors, and our Head of Technical, has relocated back to Australia.
Chris lived in Sydney between 2006 and 2013, and while there, married an Australian and started raising a family. He worked on projects across the Australasian region including the Waratah train procurement, the EMU procurements in Wellington and Auckland, the Sydney Inner West light rail procurement, the CBD and South East light rail DBOM, the Traveltrain strategy resulting in the procurement of the third Tilt Train for the Brisbane – Cairns route, the development of RISSB standards, and Chris was part of the team that created the Asset Management Branch of Transport for NSW, leading the establishment of the rolling stock standards team. Chris also volunteered for the IMechE, holding the positions of Honorary Secretary and then Chair of the NSW Branch.
In his time back in the UK, Chris has deployed his expertise on several high-profile decarbonisation strategies and procurements, working first for Steer for three years, before joining IPEX Consulting in 2016. These projects have included strategies for decarbonisation for UK fleets and freight flows, East West Rail rolling stock strategy, multiple financier due diligence projects, expert witness projects, and franchise and concession bids, creating and developing the WCML line speed project, and new rolling stock procurements including Transport for Wales multi-fleet procurement, Proxima very high speed trains in Europe, tri-mode multiple units for LNER, fleet replacement on Tyne and Wear metro, and HS2. With IPEX, Chris has maintained his Australian and New Zealand connections, working on projects such as the High Capacity Metro Trains (HCMT), a number of NSW procurements, and he is working currently on the Lower North Island Rail Integrated Mobility (LNIRIM) rolling stock procurement in New Zealand, while also supporting KiwiRail to develop decarbonisation strategies for their freight flows.
Joining IPEX as a Principal Consultant, Chris quickly became an Associate Director and Head of Technical. Chris was appointed a Director of the Board in 2020 and has been part of the Executive team and Board that have taken IPEX from a fledgling consultancy company, through the pandemic, into our growth and most successful years. As the longest serving member of the leadership after IPEX’s founder, Malcolm Wilson, Chris has been formative in setting the culture at IPEX, and as well as holding the Technical and Quality portfolios, and he is currently the Board champion on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) matters. As well as being a Director of IPEX Consulting Pty Ltd, Chris will continue as a Director of IPEX Consulting in the United Kingdom where his knowledge and contribution are highly valued across the one-company leadership as well as the technical conscience.
Chris revealed, “I am delighted to be returning to Australia where I have so many happy memories, and it was the location where I developed my specialities in rolling stock strategy and procurement. I am looking forward to refreshing connections within the Australasian railway industry and finding opportunities to help maintain and expand rail usage across the region. I am, of course, also looking forward to The Ashes in 2025/26 and the Rugby World Cup in 2027!”
Those who know Chris will know well how committed he is to the full railway world, in all of its forms, and how engaged he is in the wider railway history and heritage on which our modern railway science, practices and achievements have been founded. In the photograph Chris is volunteering on the two-foot narrow gauge railway at Beamish Museum in County Durham, England, just one of the many worldwide heritage railway systems within Chris’s extensive knowledge and familiarity.
