Porterbrook strategic hire boosts digital services…

Porterbrook, the rolling stock asset management company, has appointed Stephanie Klecha as Head of Digital Services, joining on 10 June 2019. Stephanie will be responsible for developing Porterbrook’s digital services capability, helping customers and the wider industry use data analytics to drive improvements in train services and reliability.

Stephanie joins from MRX Technologies, a unit of Siemens, where she is currently Head of Engineering, managing hardware and software teams to develop and deliver data monitoring and analytics systems for railway applications. Before joining MRX Technologies, Stephanie held leading positions within component repair and industrial process improvement teams at Rolls-Royce.

Stephanie will report to Jason Groombridge, Director of Engineering Services, and work closely with Porterbrook’s Commercial, Engineering Services and IT teams to build on our existing work in the digital field.

As the industry moves to digitise the rail network, Porterbrook is delivering benefits from its pioneering partnership with data analytics firm Elastacloud, announced in August 2018. The strategic partnership leverages the latest advances in big data and artificial intelligence to:

Enhance asset performance and reliability
Reduce overall maintenance costs and extend maintenance periodicities
Provide greater asset visibility for our customers
Support Network Rail’s infrastructure monitoring programme

Mary Grant, Porterbrook CEO, said, “I’m excited for Stephanie to join us in our mission to bring Britain’s rail network into the digital age. Porterbrook is committed to leading the way in creating a technologically advanced railway which can unlock the vast potential of currently under used or siloed rail data. We believe this could be a key contributor to improving train services for operators and ultimately, passengers.”