Prashant Desai
London
Summary
A commercially perceptive and Award-winning Engineering Leader with international experience, expertly delivering numerous fully integrated, safe, and operational railway projects to achieve client/contract specifications, time and budget targets, regulatory/legislative compliance, and Systems, Engineering, program, Design, and Assurance requirements for the past 27 years. Worked on California High Speed Rail, leveraging proven abilities in expediting complex and challenging projects by resolving key obstacles to project integration and delivery, to replicate previous success with California High Speed Rail,Jacobs Engineering Group, Transport for London, Crossrail, and Balfour Beatty-London Underground Ltd, e.g., the handover of 40x £ 1 M+ fully integrated projects.
Overview
28
28
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work history
Project Assurance and Handover Manager
Volker Wessels UK
2025.11 - 2026.04
- Independent review and oversight: Provide an independent assessment of a project's progress, performance, and alignment with business objectives to confirm it is on track to meet its goals.
- Conducting Reviews & Audits: Scheduling and leading independent reviews, health checks, and audits at key project stages (gate reviews) to scrutinize progress against the business case, scope, cost, time, and quality metrics.
- Quality assurance: Ensure the project incorporates and maintains the right level of quality, defining metrics, standards, and control points, and verifying that those standards are being met throughout the project lifecycle.
- Compliance Monitoring: Ensuring the project adheres to internal policies, industry standards (e.g., ISO 9001:2015), technical specifications, and relevant legal/regulatory requirements.
- Planning and coordination: Work with project managers to integrate assurance activities into the project plan and ensure appropriate levels of assurance are conducted at the right times.
- Risk and issue management: Identify potential risks and issues early on, gather feedback from reviews, and provide data-driven insights to help the project manager and senior management implement solutions. Reporting: Collect and analyze data from assurance activities to produce regular, accurate reports on project performance for stakeholders.
- Reporting & Communication: Gathering accurate data and reporting on project performance, assurance activities, and outcomes to stakeholders, governance bodies (e.g., Audit & Risk Assurance Committee), and external partners.
- Governance and documentation: Support the development and implementation of assurance strategies and ensure all relevant management documents are updated and ready for reviews. This can also include managing governance documentation and attending program boards.
- Continuous Improvement: Analyzing outcomes from assurance reviews, identifying lessons learned, and implementing process improvements to enhance future project delivery capability and maturity across the organization.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Building and maintaining strong working relationships with project managers, senior responsible owners (SROs), design teams, and external suppliers to ensure alignment and facilitate co-operation.
Associate Director, Systems Integration and Systems Engineering Lead
California High Speed Rail and Network, rail consulting
Sacramento, California
2024.01 - 2025.05
- Managed delivery of $40 billion initial segment of California High Speed Rail from Merced to Bakersfield and was involved in planning for $100 billion remaining segment connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles and Sacramento.
- Acted as the Chair of the California High Speed Rail Systems Engineering and Systems Integration working group.
- Directed cross-functional engineering teams across projects, achieving 98% technical compliance, 92% stakeholder alignment, and accelerating system and Program integration milestones by 18%.
- Provided technical leadership during the delivery phase, assuring that design and construction meet quality, safety, and programme requirements for CP1, CP2, CP3, CP4, and Central Valley stations.
- Successfully managed Risk and Assumptions. Issues and Dependencies logs for the entire program, and lead the meetings/workshops to close the actions.
- Worked closely with Commercial & Project leads to assess change, risk, and cost impacts.
- Formulated the top-level program integration management scope and developed an integrated master schedule that enhanced milestone tracking accuracy by 18%.
- Responsible for creating the System Development Lifecycle document (SDLC), Program Integration Management Plan, System Integration Management plan, Interface management plan, Requirement management Plan, V&V Plan, Configuration management plan and other systems engineering documents.
- Worked with contractors, subcontractors, delivery partners, stakeholders, councils, and regulatory bodies to deliver the integrated program and bring down the overall delivery cost across the program.
Associate Director, Systems Integration and Systems
Jacobs Engineering
London
2022.03 - 2023.12
- Spearheaded the development and execution of comprehensive engineering and Program integration strategies, successfully delivering solutions across 10+ multi-disciplinary projects with a 95% on-time completion rate.
- Act as client representative and make sure work delivered is as per CDM regulations.
- Managing the interface management and reviewing the Interface documentation created by Projects, and checking that overall integration is achieved.
- Managing all projects, programmes, and external interfaces and making sure the end-to-end railway is integrated.
- Leading the interface and integration audits, and following up with the projects to close the actions from the audit.
- Championed engineering leadership across bids and projects, ensuring 97% adherence to schedule, budget, and quality goals while aligning with technical certification and business approval standards.
- Cultivated a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture by implementing innovative solutions, participating in strategic decision-making, and improving team productivity metrics by 19%.
- Executed detailed gap analyses and audits, assigning corrective actions and driving closure of 90% of identified issues within project timelines, enhancing overall project delivery by 12%.
- Responsible for finalizing the overall cost of delivery, liaising with the commercial Lead, and other interfacing parties.
- Ensuring that the Programme / Project’s Design and other Technical Certification is coordinated, complete and coherent with the delivered and installed base and can be provided for Business approval and delivery to the customer.
- Ensuring that approval through own and appropriately delegated authority for all Engineering documentation and deliverables including specifications, designs, reports, analysis, code, and equipment can be achieved and that all designs developed by the project have been produced by competent designers and subject to competent design check and approval which has undergone appropriate Inter-Disciplinary Reviews & checks and are free from errors and design defects and flaws.
- Validate the engineering delivery progress and support the accurate measurement of progress on the project.
- Managing engineering baseline management.
- Produce the interface definition documents wherever necessary.
Engineering Manager/Assurance Manager/Project Engineer and Various roles
Transport for London
London
2017.05 - 2022.03
- Provided specialist professional and technical support on project engineering and technical issues to the project teams, ensuring effective and efficient delivery of projects to time, budget, and quality, encompassing.
- Promoted best practice, innovation, and cost efficiencies across design and construction teams.
- Coordinated all technical/ design manager information on projects from inception to completion.
- Identified potential design problems and offered solutions, and hosted review meetings.
- Supported Accessibility program (Step free access) in feasibility and concept design stages for Cannons Park, Queensbury, Croxley, and Theydon Bios, and helped in preparing the Engineering management plan (EMP).
- Successfully closed all outstanding Design, Construction, Safety, and regulatory issues of 4LM Hammersmith Control Centre, leading to the signing of Civils, Premises, and Drainage Project completion Certificates and project Handover.
- Applied value engineering principles to ensure the best value is achieved for the Projects delivered by the Accessibility program by conducting a detailed survey of the installation of PHP help points and CCTV cameras, and optimizing the exiting capacity, which resulted in the project savings of £10000 for 27 stations.
- Managed cross-functional projects and led relevant divisions to ensure project targets are met for Step-free access and the World-class Capacity Project.
- Involved in mapping the Program of World Class Capacity Project (WLC), Step Free access, and 4LM Hammersmith Control Centre (HSCC) to TfL Milestones and highlighting the risk associated with overrunning projects.
- Maintained & built good working relationships with internal & external customers, project stakeholders & suppliers for World Class Capacity, 4LM, and Accessibility programs.
- Worked as a Safety Assurance Engineer in Transport for London's Safety Assurance Team and completed an Engineering Safety Assurance Case (ESAC) for 4LM Hammersmith Control Centre (HSCC) for final project close-out and Handover.
- Involved in Hazard/Hazop meetings to resolve outstanding safety issues for the 4LM Hammersmith Control Centre (HSCC)Project.
- Responsible for managing Risk assessments developed for all works delivered by TfL.
- Responsible for recording all rail misses and incidents on TfL safety log.
- Responsible for reporting any serious incidents using the TfL incident reporting system.
- Acted as a member of the team to investigate the incidents as per TfL safety protocol.
- Responsible for making sure all teams' licenses and permits are up to date and booking induction for new team members.
- Responsible for reviewing all Health and safety documents and training manuals, and making sure they are up to date with current regulations.
- London Underground (Metro) is more than 150 years old, and it still has 27 stations that don’t have access for disabled people and children in buggies/strollers, which is not in accordance with recent government regulations, so Transport for London launched a flagship programme to make these stations accessible. Tasks done by me are as follows
- Involved in Feasibility study, Concept design, Detailed Design, Construction, and Handover of all accessibility works.
- Works involved the Installation of new lifts, Platform extensions, Structural modifications of existing stations, Safe exit ways, Signage, Passenger modelling, and Human factors.
- Involved in value engineering to optimize the existing potential of CCTV Coverage and passenger help points.
- Conducted speed profile reviews for ATO and CBTC Operations of the World Class Capacity project to facilitate running 30 trains/hour through the central section of the Northern line.
- Defined the scope of work for Morden and Highgate depot works as part of the Capacity Optimization team.
- Investigated the impact of different issues on the operations and performance of the Railway and prepared a detailed report recommending preferred solutions.
- Involved in providing Project Engineering support for the installation of new CRMS routes at Plaistow, Pinner, and Harrow on the Hill projects.
- Involved in end-to-end Engineering management of Highway resurfacing and Civils works for London Trams and was part of London Trams tender review process.
Technical Assurance Manager/Engineer
Crossrail Ltd
London
2014.03 - 2017.05
- Provided key support to the Head of Technical Assurance to ensure the Crossrail Programme demonstrates appropriate levels of technical assurance to its Sponsors, future Operators, and Regulatory Authorities.
- Ensured Crossrail Programme’s core delivery processes are assured (i.e., specified, documented, and supported by procedures) and routinely produced sufficient evidence of due process and controls.
- Responsible for Civils, MEP, Architecture, and System–wide Design, Technical, Construction & Safety Assurance.
- Deputized the Head of Technical Assurance as necessary and was a Crossrail design gates panel member.
- Key responsibility was Design management, which included Design Gates management, Design reviews, Design wrap up, Technical Audits, Safety reviews involving ASBO/NOBO/DEBO/ORR, organizing and leading workshops to resolve all Design, Assurance, Safety, and regulatory issues.
- Supervised all Engineering Managers, Contractors, and Project Engineers to deliver key Crossrail requirements/Objectives.
- Review the Design and construction work of Crossrail stations and make sure it complies with Crossrail Accessibility and PES requirements.
- Involved in requirement management and V & V activities of Crossrail contracts before the signing of the completion certificate.
- Assisted in the development + implementation of Technical Assurance (TA) strategies and procedures that clearly define responsibilities for delivering Technical Assurance across the Crossrail program (Civil, Station, Rail System, On Network, Depot, and Rolling Stock):
- Provided Certification and Assurance for the Whole project V life cycle.
- Ensured Assurance undertaken by Crossrail and Delivery partners (designers, contractors, Rolling Stock supplier, Berkeley Homes, Canary Wharf Group) complies with Crossrail’s Technical Assurance Strategy.
- Provided professional advice and direction on all engineering and technical assurance matters to engineering teams.
- Managed different stakeholders. Contractors and Subcontractors across 20+ Stations, Shafts, Portals, and Tunnels contracts.
- Checked appropriate consistency across the project lifecycle, i.e., during development, procurement, construction, bringing into use, and handover.
- Ensured that drawings are within the cost budget of the estimate and that there are clearly defined methods of construction.
- Made a detailed programme of Design Wrap up, liaising with Contractors, Engineering Managers, and Project Managers, and presented it to the Head of Technical Assurance.
- Provided effective direction and management to deliver projects and delivered Technical Assurance for multiple projects.
- Represented CRL to appropriate external parties and presented at both CRL and stakeholders' Board meetings.
- Mapped the Crossrail programme to Crossrail requirements and highlighted the risk associated with overrunning projects.
- Managed the Assurance of the West, Central + East sections using Single-Source-of-Truth Assurance Tracker Plan, specifically developing strategies to resolve all outstanding Assurance and Integration issues and got signed Design Certificate of integration and Final Design Submissions.
- Organized and attended Assurance meetings by leading Design + Construction Reviews to devise Assurance processes and assessed the risks associated with delivering of projects, prioritizing Assurance activities appropriately for successful Project Integration.
- Ensured consistent and progressive assurance evidence is generated by specified Delivery Partners and available to provide confidence to the Operators and Sponsors that their Technical Assurance and Project Integration requirements will be delivered.
- Prepared the template for Design risk assessment for Cross rail Project and was responsible for reviewing and accepting contractors' Risk assessments.
- Responsible for conducting Engineering Safety management review of contractors' Design before signing the Design certificate of Integration and final Design submission.
- Oversaw the risk management for projects managed and took the lead on audits and independent reviews undertaken by other parties.
- Involved in reviewing and accepting the Design Engineering Safety Justifications (DESJ), Engineering Safety Justifications (ESJ), and product breakdown structure of contractors’ work.
- Represented Crossrail in several Hazard/HAZOP workshops and identified Hazards associated with projects.
- Involved in reviewing and accepting RAM documents and consent, and planning documents before signing of Final Design Submissions.
Various senior roles ( Civils, MEP, Architecture, and Systems)
Balfour Beatty -LUL Alliance (Metronet, Track Alliance & Track Partnership)
London
2007.01 - 2014.03
- Replaced, refurbished, and maintained London Underground (LUL) Permanent Way (P-Way) Civils and Drainage, from planning and preparation to completion and handover; encompassing Project Delivery, Engineering Assurance, Project and Construction Planning, and Project Management (25+ Track and Drainage Jobs delivered).
- Created project logs to check that activities are going as per the plan.
- Coordinated and supervised activities of different teams to manage internal resources.
- Applying for licenses and permits like F10, Section 61, Storage Licenses, Hot work permits, Fire Isolations, etc.
- Ensured work is carried out as per the project schedule and checked that manpower and construction equipment needs are met.
- Appointed as BB –LUL Construction and Project Planner to develop more reliable Programmes in 2013.
- Liaised with Strategic Access Planner, Construction Teams, Engineering Train service providers, and others to create more reliable Programs.
- Produced Construction Programmes, Time Chainage, Staging Diagrams, Train Matrix, and Train Loading notes of jobs.
- Conducted Resources planning and Critical Path analysis, and Cost analysis for the delivery of Projects.
- Collaborated with project teams to ensure schedules are accurate and ensured that all the changes and their impacts are accurately reflected in schedules.
- Analyzed and maintained all reported project activities, emphasizing items such as Scope Variations, Slipped Tasks, Upcoming Tasks, and Actual Hours vs. Planned Hours.
- First and only Engineer in the Innovation team to conduct a research experiment whose product is currently used on the London Underground.
- Successfully planned, delivered, and handed back the longest and most complicated single line P- Way job on the London Underground Tower Hill Platform 1, 2010/2011.
- Assisted in resolving IBJ signaling issue between Aldgate East and Blackfriars District Line.
- Worked as a Lead Engineer on the Construction of the UK's only test track at Old Dalby, Leicestershire to test new generation LUL Trains in 2008.
- Facilitated the success of Tower Hill and Hainault Platform works by generating the Work Instruction + Methodology.
- Received Balfour Beatty’s ‘Excellent Service’ Award 2012, for contribution to the company.
- Successfully planned, replaced, and handed back drainage between Ealing Common and Ealing Broadway.
- In charge of all works, including conducting routine Engineer duties, planning for site walks/inspections to fulfil LUL Assurance requirement for final Handover, successfully handing back 40+ overrunning projects to LU.
- Submitted more H+S Files/Maids and Site Handovers to LU than any predecessor: c40 £1M+ projects in comparison with the average of 15 and trained LUL Engineers on H+S Files in LUL Lille Bridge Depot, helping to handover 25 Jobs.
- Personally, completed all ellipses as the only member of the project team with requisite points and crossing ellipse knowledge, and subsequently conducted points and crossing ellipse training for LU Design Engineers.
- Analyzed quality of work using LUL TRV (Track Recording Vehicle) data.
- Seconded to the Metronet Alliance from May to October 2008 and involved in the rebuilding of the UK’s only test Track at Old Dalby in Leicestershire, to test LUL’s ‘S’ Stock Trains.
- Selected to join the LU innovation team in February 2010 to install advanced, cost-effective Technology on LU. Successfully brought, tested, and launched new generation Insulators on LU, which did huge cost savings for LU and increased the productivity of all jobs by 15%, as a direct result of which new generation insulators have been used on all LUL Jobs since January 2011.
Senior Engineer
Government of Maharashtra and a private company
Pune
1998.01 - 2004.12
- Working on various projects of the Government of Maharashtra from initiation to Handover.
Education
BEng (Hons) - Civil Engineering
BTEC PG Diploma - Management Studies
Skills
- Systems Engineering Integration
- Design Project Integration
- Interface management
- Program Management Project Management
- Design Management Technical Assurance
- Assurance for the Whole V life cycle
- Civil Engineering, Rail, MEP, System-wide
- Project Construction Planning
- Design Construction Assurance/Review
- Value Engineering Hazard Logs / Registers
- ATO & CBTC Operations
- Safety management Risk Assessments
- Safety Assurance & Engineering Safety Planning Safety Cases / Justifications
- Procurement NEC 3 Contracts Management
- Cost Control Resource Planning
- Rail Engineering Standards Specs
- Rail Legislation Regulations
- RAM (Reliability Availability Maintainability) Human Factors
- Quality, Health Safety Standards
- Consent and planning
- Technical Audits Inspections
- Document Management systems
- Certifications Report production
- Client Relationships Networking
- Staff Training, Mentoring Developing
- Leadership in diverse environments
- Inspiring motivation
- Ethical conduct
- Technical proficiency
- Effective delegating
Certification
- BQF Sigma Six Root Cause Analysis
- 40+ Engineering, Management, and Health & Safety courses
Projects Involved
Network Rail TransPennine Route Upgrade and NEOM Saudi Arabia (remote support), World Class Capacity (WCC),4LM Hammersmith Control Centre (HSCC), Accessibility Program (Step Free Access), Future Stations capacity Upgrade Program, 4LM CRMS & Reactive program, London Trams, and TfL Operations., Totten ham Court Road Station, Bond Street Station, Whitechapel Station, Farringdon Station, Liverpool Street Station, Paddington Station, Custom House Station, Woolwich Station, Canary Wharf Station, Abbey Wood Station, Royal Oak Portal, Pudding Mill Lane Portal, Victoria Dock Portal, North Woolwich Portal, Connaught Shaft, Mile End Shaft, Limmo Shaft, Stepneys Green Shaft and Eleanor Street Shaft.
Accomplishments
- Worked as Client Systems Lead / Systems Integration Manager, and Program Integration Lead on the California High Speed rail project based in Sacramento, California, USA.
- Worked as the Chair of California High Speed Rail Systems Integration and Systems Engineering working group.
- Worked as an Interface and Integration Lead (Project and Program) on the Network Rail Transpennine route upgrade project in York, UK.
- 20 + years’ experience working in the UK for Network Rail, Transport for London, and Crossrail (Elizabeth Line) on prestigious projects.
- Invited by Network Rail Digital Railway program to advise on the preparation of the Network Rail Assurance Suite- October 2018.
- Experience of working on a variety of Transport for London Projects with varying levels of responsibilities from Engineering, Design, construction, Project/Program management, Assurance, to Safety management.
- Responsible for delivering Technical, System, Design, Construction, Program, and Safety Assurance of 20+ Crossrail Stations, Shaft, Portal, and Tunnel contracts.
- Represented the Crossrail Head of Technical Assurance in several Engineering and Safety reviews to resolve and close outstanding issues.
- Successfully closed all Crossrail Jobs outstanding Assurance issues, facilitating Jobs Handover to IMs’.
- Successfully integrated the Crossrail program by resolving all Technical, regulatory and Safety issues to meet IM specifications.
- Helped Crossrail to prepare and update the Crossrail Technical Assurance Plan (TAP) and other Assurance documentation on which all Crossrail Assurance processes and procedures are based.
- Successfully mapped the Crossrail programme to Crossrail milestones and highlighted the risk associated with overrunning projects.
- Appointed to act as BB-LUL’s Construction Planner to develop more reliable programmes to facilitate successful project delivery.
- Submitted more H+S Files/LUL MAIDS and Site Handovers to LUL than any other project member, 40x 1 M+ projects were handed back.
- Received Balfour Beatty’s ‘Excellent Service’ Award 2012, for contribution to the company.
- First and only Engineer on the BB-LUL Innovation Team Project to conduct research experiments, the product of which is currently used on LUL.
Affiliations
- Transport for London accredited Project Engineer Institution of Civil Engineers, UK
- Chartered Fellow and Chartered Manager, Chartered Management Institute, UK
- Institution of Engineers, India
Timeline
Project Assurance and Handover Manager
Volker Wessels UK
2025.11 - 2026.04
Associate Director, Systems Integration and Systems Engineering Lead
California High Speed Rail and Network, rail consulting
2024.01 - 2025.05
Associate Director, Systems Integration and Systems
Jacobs Engineering
2022.03 - 2023.12
Engineering Manager/Assurance Manager/Project Engineer and Various roles
Transport for London
2017.05 - 2022.03
Technical Assurance Manager/Engineer
Crossrail Ltd
2014.03 - 2017.05
Various senior roles ( Civils, MEP, Architecture, and Systems)
Balfour Beatty -LUL Alliance (Metronet, Track Alliance & Track Partnership)
2007.01 - 2014.03
Senior Engineer
Government of Maharashtra and a private company
1998.01 - 2004.12