Secrets of my success: David Waboso, Network Rail's MD of Digital Railway

David Waboso discusses his role of transforming the UK railway network using digital technology...

​What is Network Rail?

The state-funded company that owns and operates the railway network in England, Wales and Scotland.

What’s your role?

My job is to transform the railway network using digital technology — signalling and telecoms — to get a better service for passengers and accommodate one billion more journeys by 2030. Smart technology means we can run more trains, more reliably, over the same amount of track.

What do you enjoy about it?

When you see jobs that you’ve worked on affect people’s lives in a big way. Whether it’s sitting in the cab with Victoria line drivers to iron out the problems or, when I started out, building a section of the M25, or water supply schemes in west Africa when I was at the World Bank.

What don’t you enjoy?

Of course there is stress when things are not going well. When the Victoria line upgrade was first finished it was very unreliable. The doors didn’t work properly and trains were stopping all the time. It was stressful but we came through it.

Where have you worked before?

Before I joined Network Rail, I was director of engineering on the London Underground for 11 years. I worked on big projects: the Jubilee Line Extension to Canary Wharf, upgrading tracks and signals and improving stations and lines like the Victoria line.

I’ve also worked at the Strategic Rail Authority and the Docklands Light Railway. When I left university, I was a maths teacher in east London before getting my first engineering position building parts of the M25.

Your biggest break?

When I got a job with Mike Nichols, who ran his own project management company Nichols, which works on big infrastructure projects.

Mike, who sadly died in 2013, project managed early phases of the DLR. That was a turning point for me because it brought me from general engineering into the rail industry.

And setback?

In the late Seventies, I came out of university with an engineering master’s degree into a recession. I decided to try out teaching and started work in a very tough school on the Monday. I learned then never to ask a rhetorical question.

I loved it but I was still trying to get back into engineering. I always remember this, because in every recession there are talented people who need some help.

How’s your work-life balance?

It’s better now than it has been. When you are really climbing the career ladder, mid-career with young kids, that can be manic. I have worked with people who called meetings at 6.30pm when they knew I had young kids. That was wrong.

Now my children are grown up and I am a grandfather. My wife and I love walking.

I’m a frustrated garden architect, I play jazz guitar and go to West Ham with my son.

Any tips for those just starting out?

Whatever you are doing, do it to the best of your ability.

I wasn’t always dealing with the shiny new stuff: when I first started at the DLR I was in charge of a Poplar car park but I realised that car parking was very political so I really worked hard on that and that gave my boss the chance to give me something better to do.