Rohan Schuppan, Head of Systemwide

Rohan Schuppan has extensive experience in both management and strategic consulting in the rail sector and other industries. After commencing his career in the oil industry, Rohan worked for one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms in Australia and overseas before focussing on the rail sector as the Operational Planning manager of Citytrain, a division of QR. In this position, one of Rohan’s responsibilities was the design and implementation of a complete re-build of the metropolitan timetable. This timetable has delivered significant measurable operational improvements to the organisation.

Following this, Rohan founded Systemwide in 1998 and since then has been responsible for the completion of numerous high-level strategic and operational feasibility studies for government agencies and corporations in the rail sector throughout Australia. His work focuses on, but is not limited to, infrastructure capacity analysis and strategic operating plans for complex rail systems, particularly metropolitan networks.

Rohan is adept at guiding strategy by understanding the important influence of rail operations on the strategic success of a railway. This relationship is critical to the success of a railway as it strongly affects the customer experience, the capital investment and the on-going cost of operation.

Huw Hawkins, Technical Director

Huw’s role at Systemwide sees him predominantly overseeing and managing the analysis and delivery of consultancy projects. Having cut his teeth conducting detailed analysis on Melbourne’s network, he now manages a range of detailed and high-level strategic analyses around Australia.

His current projects include defining the future rail operational requirements of the Brisbane metropolitan network, assistance with developing strategic operating plans for the new metropolitan operator in Melbourne, assessment of the implications of the introduction of ETCS into the RailCorp network in Sydney and creating a rail operating plan for the coalfields of Central Queensland.

Mike Backhouse, Principal Consultant

Since joining Systemwide in 2009 Mike has been extensively involved in the planning and delivery of a wide range of projects to clients throughout Australia. Projects Mike has been involved with include the examination of strategic options for the Adelaide Rail Network, development of a Strategic Operating Plan for the Melbourne Metropolitan railway, analysis of the impact of ETCS signalling on the RailCorp network and the creation of a System Operating Plan for the Goonyella coal network.

Elton Gani, Senior Consultant

Elton has worked on an extensive range of studies covering the Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney passenger system as well as the Queensland's coal freight network. His most notable project looks at developing Brisbane's long term rail strategy, its requirements and impacts on passenger amenity through to 2051. As part of the Systemwide team, Elton is mainly responsible for leading the project analysis and assisting in management of project deliverables.

David Glover, Senior Consultant

Whilst at Systemwide, David has analysed various complex rail planning and operational problems throughout Australia at both strategic and detailed modelling levels.

David has been instrumental in defining the future rail operational requirements of the Brisbane metropolitan network as part of the largest planned recent rail infrastructure project in Brisbane — the Cross River Rail project. He also built an extensive model to forecast performance and resource requirements for the Melbourne metropolitan network as part of MTM’s successful bid for the franchise.

In addition to passenger operations, David has undertaken detailed freight analysis to investigate the benefits of proposed infrastructure upgrades to networks in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, as well as the future capability of the Brisbane metropolitan network to meet forecast freight growth.

David’s diverse background in discrete mathematics and the physical sciences provides him with a solid base for complex systems analysis and has been invaluable in his work with Systemwide.

Steve Hobbs, Consultant

Prior to relocating to Australia, Steve developed his experience in rail infrastructure capacity, performance and train performance modelling, as a Systems Modelling Specialist for six years at Network Rail (UK).

Steve was engaged in a number of projects including the multi-billion pound Crossrail, Thameslink and West Coast Route Modernisation projects, devising new methods of analysis required for combinations of complex signalling and driver behaviour interactions.

Since joining Systemwide in 2010 Steve has been involved in the analysis of the potential impact of several new signalling systems on the South East Queensland rail network.

Yann Buannic, Consultant

Over the last seven years, Yann has held a number of rail and transport positions. While with Yarra Trams, Yann oversaw the operational performance and rolling stock reliability reporting to the Department of Infrastructure and the Board. He was also responsible for roster implementation and management at Southbank Depot.

Working for GHD, Yann participated in the overview of Adelaide’s rail network, the Dynon Precinct rail yard redevelopment strategy, and the Brighton Intermodal Hub study.

A client-focused individual, Yann takes great pride in providing customers with timely outputs that are of the highest standard. He is able to apply his academic and practical transport system skills, as well as his economic understanding of underlying demand drivers, to a range of transport planning challenges.

Rick Singleton, Consultant

Rick recently joined Systemwide after completing a sabbatical learning French in Paris.

He has already made a substantial contribution to projects on the Metropolitan networks of Australia. Rick has assessed strategic long term rail plans for the Sydney network to advise on the operational implications of these plans. He has undertaken extensive analysis of the fleet size, specialisation and sectorisation required to support future operations on the Brisbane network.

In addition to Metropolitan rail, Rick has undertaken supply chain modelling of Heavy Haul rail networks, and Light Rail and Tram feasibility studies for Canberra and Melbourne.

Rick has over four years engineering and management experience with one of the largest passenger-rail operators in Australia. His previous role was in strategic planning for the RailCorp PPP Rolling Stock Acquisition project: a multi-billion dollar project introducing a private business model, a new maintenance facility, and replacing half of the Sydney suburban rail fleet.

Matthew Steel, Consultant

Since joining Systemwide, Matthew has worked on developing a crewing and depot strategy for a coal railway in Queensland and validating a 2016 rail operating plan for Adelaide including forecasting future passenger loadings. More recently, Matthew has designed a parametric model to assist the strategic planning of rail depot locations for a mining company.

Matthew's programming and operations research background augments his consulting skills, providing him with novel tools and techniques to perform planning and network analysis.

Shan Lim, Consultant

Shan has worked on studies involving both heavy haul and passenger railway networks.

Her most recent work involves modelling future operating scenarios for the Brisbane metropolitan network. This project also looks at how and when the proposed Cross River Rail tunnel may be implemented to increase capacity in future years.

Previous work includes analysis of a greenfield heavy haul mine to port project where she analysed the performance of the consist and validated its capability of operating on the greenfield alignment. Shan also assisted in the analysis of the supply chain for several sensitivity scenarios.

Minh Vuong, C# Programmer

Minh is one of the key developers of Systemwide’s proprietary software, Train Load Predictor. This software allows rapid reporting on a number of key timetable performance indicators for proposed and potential future timetables, including a prediction of future passenger loads on individual services. These assist in providing a sound understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of a service plan or proposed timetable, which is critical for railway network planning and to ensure customer expectations are upheld. With his background in information technology and computer science, Minh has been focused on enriching software features and improving software performance. This work has included data analysis, scientific algorithm implementation and implementation of usability improvements for the graphical interface.