Jon, James and Emily are all trained mentors for the Society’s Professional Development Scheme, helping younger transport planners develop their careers in a structured way, and Nicola is planning to start mentoring Arup’s trainees.  Hopefully, with their good guidance others will follow them to award of the TPP.
 
We asked each of them to tell us something about their work and why award of the TPP was important to them. 
 
Jon, who has a Transport Economics Masters from Leeds ITS, is an Associate Director in JMPs London Office and has worked within the consultancy sector for 17 years. He leads work on a wide range of strategic transport planning and economics projects, including transport strategies and master plans, as well as appraisals and scheme prioritisation. Responding to our request for some words about the TPP, Jon explained that ‘despite the personal commitment required to apply for the TPP, I appreciated the importance of having an industry-recognised qualification that demonstrates excellence within the transport planning sector. It was also important to me to support the industry in promoting itself through establishing the TPP benchmark’.
 
Mark, who has a degree in transport management at Aston University, is with London Underground, where he is responsible for benefits delivery, with a daily workload as varied as signalling systems, customer information, and demand forecasting.  He joined London Underground in 2007 after seven years in consultancy. With the Underground he feels he has made a positive impact, first in engineering closures, then in service planning and demand management for the Olympics, and latterly designing and implementing ‘Night Tube’ –  weekend 24 hour operation. But, he is quick to add that he is still ‘a transport planner at heart’, and explained that award of the TPP reflects this, ‘demonstrating the breadth of skills and experience I have gained’, and commenting that ‘with the first people completing the PDS, and growing interest in TPP amongst my colleagues, I feel we are at the start of what will become an industry standard’.
 
Nicola, was an elected TPS Director for seven years, spending the last five as the Society’s Company Secretary until her term of office ended last year.  But she continues to be active in the Society, helping run the North East Branch. After graduating from the University of Leeds with a Masters in Geography in 2005, Nicola worked at JMP in Newcastle as a transport planner before joining Arup in 2007, where she is now a Senior Transport Planner based at their Stockton office.   Working mainly in development planning, Nicola said ‘I felt it was important to achieve the TPP qualification to provide assurance to those I work with that I am qualified to provide transport advice, to inform development design and planning decisions’.  Having achieved the TPP, Nicola hopes to mentor others towards achieving the qualification and will continue to raise the profile of transport planning through her work with the TPS and CIHT local branches. 
 
James is a Senior Transport Planner with JMP Consultants in their Leeds office, joining them after completing a doctorate on Rural Rail services at the University of Leeds. With JMP, he specialises in scheme appraisal, including scheme auditing, as well as rail planning and demand forecasting.  He sees the award of the TPP as important, providing him ‘with confidence that I am recognised as having a breadth of knowledge across the transport planning sector whilst also acknowledging that I have specialist skills in a number of areas’. 
 
Emily joined Jacobs as a graduate in 2009, and is now a Senior Transport Planner, having completed the Southampton Masters in Transportation Planning and Engineering, studying part-time. Throughout her time at Jacobs, Emily has been involved in the delivery of a range of traffic and transportation projects for local authorities, including transport strategy development, feasibility and assessment studies, business case preparation and road safety audits. Emily is ‘extremely pleased to have achieved the TPP. It is an excellent way to demonstrate the knowledge and experience that I have gained over the past years working in transport and will further assist in my future career progression. I would strongly recommend the TPP qualification to fellow transport planners’.