Dan Everest

My team runs the engineering systems that keep a train operator's fleet maintained and moving: asset management, yard management, the links between them, and the reporting engineers and managers use to make decisions.

Most of the job sits between strategy and delivery. Working out what should change, then making sure the change survives contact with a depot at three in the morning.

Before rail I worked in defence, conflict and crisis management. That's where I learned to stay calm when things go wrong, and to plan for the day they will.

I'm at my best at the front of things: scanning the horizon, reading where the industry and the technology are heading, and making the strategic calls early. I'm comfortable deciding with incomplete information, as long as the decision can be revisited when better information arrives.

Delivery is where the people in my team grow, so I hand it over properly: clear direction, room to work, and the credit when it lands. The best thing I can do for a project once the direction is set is often to get out of its way.

I'm completing a Level 7 senior leadership qualification alongside the day job. After years of leading on instinct, it has been useful to put names to things. The ideas that have changed how I work are Liz Wiseman's Multipliers, adaptive leadership for problems with no technical fix, and leaving a pause between stimulus and response. It has also sharpened how I support people. A coach brings good questions for your answers; a mentor brings good answers for your questions. Knowing which one someone needs is half the job.

Partner and dad. Outside work it's mostly horses and the home lab: self-hosted services, monitored and planned with the same thinking about failure as the systems at work, ESP32 touchscreens in 3D printed cases, and a house that is slowly getting cleverer than strictly necessary.

I run when I can, like travel, especially routes planned around a good view, and I'm trying to write more.