Neil Kirkwood joins Steer

Steer is delighted to welcome Neil Kirkwood as an Associate Director in our Birmingham office. Neil will work with clients across the rail sector to help them develop and deliver on their strategic priorities.

Neil brings distinctive insight from a unique profile of roles across two decades in UK rail. With a grounding in managing complex stakeholder, commercial and contractual relationships, he has led collaboration, network access and performance improvement plans with passenger operators and franchise bidders; industry strategic planning for major and diverse routes; and the governance and development of rail projects. He has created industry-leading capabilities to deliver the strategic integration of major programmes and portfolios, collaborating across organisational and industry interfaces and providing trusted, credible advice to government, operators, and infrastructure managers.

Neil joins Steer from Network Rail, the UK rail Infrastructure Manager and System Operator, where he was most recently Director, Network Integration & Policy. Prior to this, in the unique role of HS2 Integration Director, Neil initiated and led the development of a comprehensive framework and dedicated team for the strategic, industry-level integration of HS2 with the existing railway, reflecting lessons from other major programmes. With his experience in leading strategic planning and key customer relationships, Neil led collaboration across industry partners and was a trusted advisor to the Department for Transport, its delivery body HS2 Ltd, and operators.