Mark Woodhouse

About Mark Woodhouse

With over 30 years of experience across a spectrum of environments, sectors and professions, the majority of his career has been in the transport infrastructure sector within government organisations. Rather than specialising in a particular area, Mark blends his unique capabilities and experience to provide pragmatic solutions to any problem.

A systems thinker, Mark can examine complex environments (procedures, policies, plans, costs, etc.) and translate them into logical flows and interactions so people can understand what happens when and how. They can also see how what they do fits into the bigger picture that is the organisation.

Mark likes to be challenged to devise solutions that make everything more efficient, reconfiguring technology and tweaking procedures to make them more visible and understandable. Transformation involves integrating information so that it can be used to make the right decisions at the right time. This requires people to know what they do in the wider context and what they need to do in that flow. Mark imparts his knowledge to develop individuals and organisations to enable growth and add value.

Mark has been involved in organisations at many levels and has worked on projects, mega projects, and large investment portfolios, providing a breadth of knowledge and experience on the ground and at the strategic level.

At HS2, Mark was bought in to set up the information structure to make operations visible. He ran the transformation programme that linked everything together, including:

• How system data would flow into the reports to show progress.
• How this would be presented to enable the team and the executive to make decisions and control the project.
• Developing the strategy to manage the information designing the system that would link the quality and control environment to risk appetite and the assurance programme to ensure transparency of issues so they could be managed at the right time.
• Embedding the performance cycle and the thread of information from the contractor through the organisation to the government.

At Transport for London, Mark restructured the performance cycle and designed the systems to capture information out of the Mayor’s mouth through strategy development and into goals that could be tracked to the individual projects that were being delivered across London. He provided visibility and understanding of the time and cost involved in delivering the objectives as well as providing information into the supply chain to plan the delivery of the investment portfolio.

At Network Rail, Mark developed the system to manage the investment portfolio. He planned the work in a 25-year-plus window, managed the change control around it and provided visibility on who did what and the decisions required. He also made it available to the supply chain so they could establish fully integrated plans to deliver.

What do you love about what you do?

Solving the puzzle. I love that I get to apply my systems thinking to every solution I deliver. I use my experience and knowledge to gain a thorough understanding of the problem so I can provide pragmatic advice or solutions that produce positive outcomes.

I also love seeing people grow and develop in understanding and capability and watching the light bulb moment when someone suddenly grasps the bigger picture that is in my mind, and they get it. That’s what gets me out of bed every morning.