Bigger than the sum of our parts
Notch 8 combines executive leadership, specialist expertise, and strategic partnerships to provide clients with access to some of the rail industry’s most experienced practitioners. Our delivery model enables us to assemble bespoke teams tailored to the specific needs of each commission, bringing together operational, engineering, asset management, safety, and technology expertise from across the industry.
The Leadership Team
Aaron Wood
Founding Partner
Managing Director
Aaron is one of the founders of Notch 8 Consultancy and a senior Engineering, Maintenance, Asset Management and Safety Executive with more than 25 experience.
Having held executive leadership positions for operators, maintainers, asset owners, and consultancies across the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and North America, he specialises in operational transformation, performance recovery, asset management, and organisational governance.
Aaron has successfully mobilised new railways, led major infrastructure and rolling stock programmes, introduced cutting-edge inspection technologies, and delivered large-scale organisational change.
His pragmatic, results-focused approach combines strategic vision with operational delivery, helping clients improve safety, reliability, customer experience, and commercial performance.
Dr. Lucy Wood
Founding Partner
Director of Organisational Psychology
Lucy is a co-founder of Notch 8 Consultancy and a Dr of Clinical Psychology with more than 15 years of experience practising across the United Kingdom and the Middle East in both public and private healthcare settings.
Her expertise lies in understanding human behaviour, motivation, resilience, and the factors that influence individual and organisational performance. At Notch 8, Lucy applies her clinical and psychological expertise to support the human side of organisational change, helping leaders and teams navigate transformation, uncertainty, and growth. She brings valuable insight into stakeholder behaviours, organisational culture, leadership development, coaching, mentoring, and workforce engagement, enabling clients to achieve lasting change through people as well as process.
Her unique blend of clinical rigour, empathy, and practical problem-solving strengthens Notch 8’s ability to understand clients, stakeholders, and organisational dynamics at a deeper level, ensuring solutions are not only technically robust but also successfully adopted and sustained. By helping align people, behaviours, and organisational objectives, Lucy plays an important role in enabling Notch 8 to deliver effective outcomes right first time, every time.
Olivia Franklin
Operations Manager
Olivia is Operations Manager at Notch 8 Consultancy and a communications, bid writing and production, and business support professional with a proven ability to transform complex technical, operational, and strategic information into clear, compelling, and visually engaging outputs.
Alongside managing the day-to-day operation of the business, she plays a key role in the delivery of consultancy services and client-facing deliverables. Drawing on experience gained across Australia, the UAE, South Africa, and the UK, Olivia has supported high-value bids, strategic proposals, organisational improvement initiatives, and stakeholder communications across multiple sectors. Her strengths lie in bid document development, stakeholder coordination, communications, and visual presentation, ensuring complex information is communicated clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Olivia’s combination of operational management, consultancy support, writing, and design capability strengthens Notch 8’s ability to deliver high-quality outputs, maintain strong client relationships, and present complex solutions in a clear, professional, and persuasive manner.
Our Experts
John Taylor
Senior Consultant
John is a Chartered Electrical Engineer and member of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers. A highly respected rail engineering leader with more than 45 years of experience across heavy rail, metro, tramway, and high-speed rail environments. Having held senior leadership positions in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, he brings extensive expertise in infrastructure maintenance, asset management, operational readiness, organisational mobilisation, and engineering governance.
Throughout his career, John has provided leadership, technical guidance, and strategic direction across some of the industry’s most complex railway systems, leading large multidisciplinary teams responsible for track, signalling, telecommunications, power, facilities, rolling stock, and station infrastructure. His experience spans the full asset lifecycle, from mobilisation and commissioning through to maintenance optimisation, renewal planning, asset stewardship, and operational performance improvement.
John is particularly valued for his ability to combine deep technical knowledge with practical operational insight, and ensures Notch 8 are successful at helping organisations make informed decisions that improve reliability, maintainability, safety, and long-term asset performance.
Tim Kay
Senior Consultant
Tim is a Fellow of the Institute of Asset Management and a highly regarded infrastructure asset management advisor with more than 20 years of experience helping operators, asset owners, regulators, and investors improve the performance, resilience, and long-term value of complex infrastructure systems. Working across rail, aviation, utilities, ports, and transport sectors throughout Europe and the Middle East, he specialises in aligning asset strategy, operational performance, risk, and investment planning to support informed decision-making and sustainable outcomes.
Tim is particularly valued for his ability to bridge the gap between strategic intent and practical delivery, helping organisations translate policy, governance, and investment objectives into tangible improvements in asset performance and operational effectiveness. His experience spans asset management maturity assessments, ISO 55001 implementation, capital programme governance, organisational transformation, infrastructure resilience, and executive advisory support.
Having advised major infrastructure organisations including airports, ports, utilities, metro systems, regulators, and transport operators, Tim brings a pragmatic and evidence-based approach to complex challenges. His combination of operational understanding, strategic thinking, and deep asset management expertise strengthens Notch 8’s ability to support clients facing significant investment decisions, organisational change, regulatory scrutiny, or long-term asset management challenges.
Manny Chana
Senior Consultant
Manny is a rolling stock maintenance, operational excellence, and production optimisation specialist with more than 30 years of experience spanning rail engineering, fleet maintenance, depot operations, asset management, and continuous improvement. His career has been built around improving performance within complex operational environments, helping organisations increase capacity, optimise maintenance delivery, improve reliability, and enhance workforce effectiveness.
Drawing on experience gained across major operators, maintainers, manufacturers, and consultancy organisations, Manny specialises in maintenance optimisation, production planning, process improvement, governance, and operational transformation. He has successfully supported fleet introductions, rolling stock refurbishment programmes, depot mobilisation activities, maintenance optimisation initiatives, and large-scale performance improvement programmes across the UK, Europe, and North America.
Manny is known for his ability to turn data, operational insight, and frontline experience into practical, measurable improvements. Combining expertise in maintenance optimisation, reliability management, production planning, capacity modelling, and continuous improvement with a collaborative, hands-on approach, he helps organisations improve asset availability, increase throughput, reduce inefficiencies, and unlock the full potential of their people, processes, and assets to deliver sustainable operational performance.
Strategic Alliances
Notch 8 works alongside a carefully selected group of organisations whose expertise complements our own. These strategic alliances enable us to draw upon additional capability in technology, assurance, programme delivery, organisational transformation, and specialist rail consultancy, ensuring our clients have access to the right expertise when it is needed.
Future Maintenance Technologies and Notch 8 bring together two highly complementary capabilities. FMT provides the technological innovation, developing and deploying industry-leading solutions such as ARIIS, TReS, advanced condition monitoring, asset intelligence platforms, and machine learning-enabled analytics. Notch 8 ensures these technologies are translated into tangible operational and commercial benefits through structured implementation, organisational alignment, change management, and integration with existing maintenance and asset management strategies. Together, we help clients bridge the gap between technology deployment and benefit realisation, recognising that whilst data and automation are powerful enablers, sustainable improvements are only achieved when solutions are aligned to business objectives, embraced by frontline teams, and embedded into everyday ways of working.
North Star Consultancy and Notch 8 combine complementary expertise to provide clients with a comprehensive and well-rounded advisory capability. North Star brings extensive experience in operations, mobilisation, organisational design, workforce planning, customer experience, and human resources, whilst Notch 8 contributes specialist expertise in engineering, maintenance, asset management, safety, assurance, technology integration, and operational transformation. Working collaboratively, the two organisations are able to support clients across the full spectrum of railway operations and maintenance, ensuring that strategic, operational, technical, and people considerations are aligned. The result is a balanced and practical approach that delivers sustainable improvements, supports successful change, and helps clients achieve their operational and commercial objectives.
DNV and Notch 8 bring together two highly complementary perspectives that help clients bridge the gap between compliance and operational reality. DNV is internationally recognised for its expertise in risk management, assurance, certification, governance, and independent verification, providing clients with confidence that systems, processes, and assets meet the highest standards of performance and compliance. Notch 8 complements this capability through extensive operational, engineering, maintenance, and asset management experience gained from the delivery of live railway systems around the world. Together, the organisations are able to ensure that assurance, certification, and governance frameworks are not only technically robust, but also practical, deliverable, and aligned with the realities of operating and maintaining complex rail systems. The result is a balanced approach that combines independent assurance with real-world operational insight, helping clients achieve outcomes that are both compliant and effective.
Why our approach works
At Notch 8, we believe that successful outcomes are rarely achieved through technical expertise alone. The most effective solutions are those that balance operational reality, engineering excellence, organisational capability, stakeholder needs, and strategic intent. Too often, organisations are presented with recommendations that are technically sound but difficult to implement, or conversely, operationally convenient but lacking the rigour needed to deliver sustainable improvement. Our approach is built around closing that gap.
Our team has led, operated, maintained, mobilised, transformed, and assured complex railway systems across the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and beyond. We understand the realities of running live operations, maintaining critical assets, introducing new technology, managing risk, and delivering change in environments where safety, performance, and customer service cannot be compromised. This practical experience enables us to develop solutions that are grounded, credible, and capable of delivering measurable results.
We also recognise that successful transformation depends on people as much as process. Whether introducing new technology, implementing revised maintenance strategies, improving organisational performance, or mobilising a new railway, long-term success requires alignment between leadership teams, frontline staff, and business objectives. By combining technical expertise with operational understanding, organisational insight, and structured change management, we help clients achieve improvements that are not only delivered, but adopted, sustained, and continuously improved.
Our flexible delivery model further strengthens this approach. Through a carefully selected network of consultants, strategic alliances, and specialist technology providers, we are able to assemble the right expertise for each commission without the overhead and rigidity of traditional consultancy structures. This ensures clients receive focused, high-quality support from experienced practitioners who understand both the strategic challenges and the practical realities of delivering successful rail and transit systems.
The result is a consultancy approach that is collaborative, pragmatic, data-informed, and relentlessly focused on outcomes. We do not simply provide advice; we work alongside our clients to ensure solutions are realistic, implementable, and capable of delivering lasting value.
Whether you need strategic advice, interim leadership, asset management maturity, technology deployment, mobilisation support, or operational recovery, Notch 8 can assemble the right capability quickly and deliver with clarity, pace, and resolve.