Katie Rees-Gill, Associate Director for Environment – Head of Heritage Operations, AtkinsRéalis will be joining us at the upcoming Electrification Seminar to explore the impact of electrification on the historic environment with a TRU case study. Keep reading to get to know Katie – her journey, passions, and what inspires her work.
About Katie
Katie is a Member of the Institute for Archaeologists with twenty-five years’ experience within the historic environment sector. She has been the heritage technical lead for the Transpennine Route upgrade since 2017, in which she is responsible for managing consents and discharging conditions for the listed stations, viaducts and bridges along the route.
Why did you want to present in a PWI technical seminar?
I am keen to share the breadth of skills, disciplines and professionals that are involved in major rail schemes and to promote the work of the historic environment sector. Our rail networks are rich with historic assets, many of which are listed or scheduled monuments. It is a challenge to maintain, upgrade and improve rail networks whilst respecting and preserving the historic attributes of them and pay homage to the 19th century engineers who built these structures and railways. I was therefore interested to share my experience of working on the Transpennine Route Upgrade and in particular the design optioneering work to ensure that Overhead Line equipment (OLE) can be installed in a sensitive manner to the historic structures.
What are some of the biggest challenges of your current role?
My role is to ensure that listed building consent is granted and conditions attached to the granted listed building consent are discharged appropriately. Therefore, my challenge is to ensure that designs and scheme proposals are suitable and that I can demonstrate to conservation officers the benefits of the scheme outweighing any harm to the historic environment. I also need to negotiate with engineers and designers in achieving design mitigations and adjustments to limit harm to the historic environment. This can be complex requiring lots of understanding, innovative thinking and patience.
What do you enjoy most about your current role?
Every day is a school day! I learn so much from interacting with the multi-disciplinary teams and have gained so much understanding of what is required to design and construct a railway. Over the years, we have built up a huge amount of respect for what we all do and I do feel that there is a collaborative appreciation for the heritage of the railway and a sense of purpose in that we are adding to the story: delivering the next phase of improvements which will hopefully be appreciated by current and future generations.
Many thanks to Katie for sharing a bit about herself. We’re looking forward to seeing you on the day!
