About Us
Experienced Consultants with Long Established Relationships
Our small team of consultants have been working together for many years in different roles. Although we have also worked in the past in other sectors, most of Kingdom Technology’s work is now in railways – we have worked for over 30 in five continents.
Managing Partner Robin Hirsch founded the firm in 1990. He came into management consultancy with A T Kearney in 1985 after a board level corporate career. He often works through Imperial College’s Railway & Transport Strategy Centre and CARIS Research Ltd, which took over Kingston University’s work in its Centre for Applied Research in Information Systems.
Many of us are also university lecturers and most have other businesses:
Piers Connor, MD of PRC Rail Consulting, has front line experience in maintenance, operations, design, planning, manufacturing, project development. His consultancy includes new line development, rail systems integration, interface management, train operations planning, rolling stock maintenance, systems design and modelling.
Malcolm Hamer, Director of Acumen Solutions, has 30+ years’ experience in building state-of-the-art networks and data centre infrastructures, and developing pioneering network-based applications, for leading global organizations. He is an expert (amongst other things) at improving IT operations processes and the toolsets used to manage these processes. Based in New York.
Michael Hamlyn, CEO of Kuseiog Ltd., is a specialist in railway train control systems, railway safety and risk-based asset lifecycle management. He is based in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Delhi. He sold his earlier company MHA Systems to Lloyds Register in 2001 and ran it until 2007.
Dr Nigel G Harris, MD of The Railway Consultancy, built his reputation on technical advances in network modelling and fares policy research. He has expertise in operational simulation, demand forecasting, scheme appraisal and railway business planning worldwide. He runs the Railway Management module of Newcastle University’s MSc in Transport Engineering and Operations.
Kathleen Hirsch was a Chief Sub-Editor at BBC Overseas News Services, then after a career break was Editor of Age Concern Surrey news and a course organiser for the Law Society’s Local Government Group.
Associate Professor Felix Schmid runs the MSc in Railway Systems Engineering & Integration at the University of Birmingham. His particular interest is in robust forms of organisation and leadership in safety critical businesses. His expertise is much wider, from railway capacity to human factors in safety critical systems, train control algorithms and freight demand modelling.
Bernard Thouin, owner of Define IT GmbH, has 30+ years of experience in IT, mainly in banking IT. He covers the whole product life cycle from requirements gathering to analysis, design, development, deployment and support of solutions. He is based in Zurich.
Chris Wills, MD of CARIS Research Ltd, specialises in software processes in safety critical systems. He scoped the design of warship command and control systems for the Royal Navy. Other clients include the UK Defence Evaluation Research Agency, Police Service, Health Service, Department for Transport, the UITP and Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation.
Iebe Ypma is a Director of Alastor Consulting. His strengths lie in change and project management, procurement and logistics, supported by skill sets in IT strategy, process mapping and process innovation. His 25+ years of consultancy experience has spanned a range of roles across both the private and public sector.