About Us

Piers’ experience in the Bus industry started 40 years ago when he worked in area planning and scheduling for a subsidiary of the National Bus Company in the UK. The pre-privatisation restructuring process in the UK gave Piers the opportunity to broaden his role to include direct Operations which eventually led to him taking on “day to day” Operational and Financial responsibility as a Depot Manager.

 

At 31 he was appointed as Managing Director for a newly privatised Bus company (Peoples Provincial) which was owned by the majority of the personnel under an Employee Share ownership plan. The next few years Piers led the significant growth of this business against a background of heavy “head to head” competition then later the successful sale of the company to a large UK plc (FirstGroup). He remained in place as Managing Director under new ownership and oversaw the subsequent purchase of the company’s biggest competitor with the integration and optimization of resources that followed.

After 8 years at Provincial Piers took a Managing Director role in a sister company which was bigger and more complex (First Cymru) where a recent merger had taken place with unsuccessful results. It was his role to deliver actions to turnaround the results in the company and bring a new identity and team spirit to the business.

The improvement in the results came and with that promotion to the role of Divisional Director South and Wales in Firstgroup where Piers had overall operating and financial responsibility for 7 subsidiary companies through individual Managing Directors who reported to him. As well as the delivery of Financial and Operating results for the Division with the actions needed to support these Piers successfully led negotiations for the merger of all pension schemes in the Division and later led National Pension negotiations for the group scheme.

In 2003 Piers joined Arriva Plc as Northern European Director taking on similar budgetary and operating responsibilities to his Divisional role in FirstGroup but with the added dimensions of Rail (as well as Bus), Mergers and acquisitions and also operating in countries outside the UK (Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden). This was a particularly active time in the Arriva growth programme and in the years that followed he also had a role was to lead mergers, acquisitions and contract bids in existing and new countries as the Northern European division expanded. By 2010 Piers had also worked across all modes in Germany, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland taking the lead in bids, acquisitions and subsequent mobilization and integration projects.

During 2010 Arriva was acquired by Deutsche Bahn which led to the disposal of Arriva Deutschland and the restructuring of Piers’ role to include more emphasis on Merger, acquisitions and contract bidding across the Arriva portfolio and less “day to day” financial and operating activity. He took on the role of full time Business Development Director in the years that followed concentrating purely on growth and adding prospecting in new countries to activity in the Arriva business at the time. In recent years he has led and worked on a number of projects in the majority of countries in Mainland Europe as well as many others outside Europe.

Piers was also President for EPTO which was a lobbying and influencing association for the biggest Passenger Transport companies in Europe. In that role he met the European Commission and other stakeholders regularly and provided feedback on relevant proposed and existing legislation around contracting and liberalization (For example EU 1370, 4th Rail package)

 

 In April 2019 after 16 years Piers chose to leave Arriva and look for opportunities to work with different companies in areas where his previous experience could be most useful. He is a Director of PP Transport Management which was established in June 2019 to undertake consultancy and management services.

Bus and Rail passenger Transport

Change management

Project leadership and planning

Logistics

Network design and operational planning

Business process improvement

Planning and Transformation

Budget control and forecasting

Contract delivery

Business plan delivery

Negotiation 

Board and Supervisory Board management

Integration, mobilisation and business turnaround and improvement

Mentoring, support and personnel training for management roles

Team leadership and development 

Lobbying and stakeholder management including persuading and influencing

29 years of Director level roles across a number of different European countries

Direct working experience across European Transport Markets

Prospecting and business development experience across Europe and in several other regions including Turkey and the Middle East