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Where it came from and where it’s heading

Network Certification Body (NCB) was created and began trading back in 2012 with James Collinson appointed as Managing Director; after six years James decided to step down and join Network Rail’s Infrastructure Projects. The recruitment process started and Sam Brunker, NCB’s founding member, was appointed as the new Managing Director back in August.

Six years prior, Sam was involved in the creation of NCB following the revised interoperability regulations introduced by the European Commission to introduce the concept of a designated body (DeBo). When NCB began trading in 2012, Sam was an Infrastructure Conformance Manager before progressing to the technical leadership role of Professional Head in 2015. On his appointment to Managing Director Sam said “I am very pleased to be leading not only a great company, but a great team – our business is our people”.

NCB has certificated a number of vehicle and infrastructure projects such as Thameslink, Crossrail, Caledonian Sleepers and Loram rail grinders. However, looking ahead to the future NCB will be diversifying what they sell. Sam said “NCB has had big high-profile work but, in the future, apart from HS2 and East West Rail, there are less mega projects to speak of. It’s going to be much smaller pieces of work for a much larger group of clients because of the way enhancement work is going to be contracted in CP6”.

As CP6 is quite an unknown for the supply base of the industry NCB has a fully detailed plan for year one of CP6 but we will then look to reissue the business plan once we have better information. We have seen many opportunities to support the rail industry further during CP5 and will be exploring this more in the next 12 months”.

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