In October former AECOM global freight rail director Rob McAlpine is joining KiwiRail as it’s new group general manager of operations.
“Rob is an impressive talent, with an invaluable level of leadership diversity and a broad knowledge of rail planning, engineering, and operations,” says KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy.
Reidy says KiwiRail is appointing McAlpine following an extensive selection process from a strong field of internal and external international candidates.
McAlpine has more than 30 years of operational and strategic experience in the rail sector leading large bulk rail, intermodal and freight forwarding businesses with Queensland Rail and a transportation infrastructure business for AECOM.
He was AECOM’s global freight rail director for nine years where he led its freight rail infrastructure business across North America, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
As operations, general manager for QRNational McAlpine led a team of more than 3000 people in the transport and logistics of 190 million tonnes of coal and freight per annum.
He is joining KiwiRail’s recent appointments, group general manager network services Todd Moyle, and group general manager for rolling stock and asset services Roy Sullivan.
The company says that McAlpine will enable KiwiRail to deliver enterprise-wide economic change through in-depth rail knowledge and extensive international experience.
He is taking over from the incumbent Iain Hill who has decided to retire from KiwiRail after seven years with the company.
“In the time Iain has been here we have developed a competitive market strategy around intermodal freight services which has allowed the growth in freight volumes which we are now starting to see, particularly in the Import Export market,” says Reidy.
