Join us for a dynamic and insightful morning at the CE Midlands Infrastructure Conference, where industry leaders converge to explore the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping our region’s infrastructure landscape.

Don’t miss this exceptional opportunity to connect, learn, and collaborate with key experts in the infrastructure sector. Reserve your spot now!

Keynote Speaker: Dr Jennifer Charlson

Jennifer is qualified as both a Solicitor and Chartered Engineer with a PhD in Construction Law. She has been a Senior University Lecturer, an in-house solicitor with a major contractor and a Projects Engineer working for the BBC. She currently works for the Infrastructure and Projects Authority with a focus on transforming infrastructure delivery through industrialisation

Tawhida Yaacoub

Tawhida Yaacoub Programme Lead at Midlands Connect joined since 2022 as part of the Integrated Transport team. Following a career “on the ground”  working on the railway as a Station Manager, a Senior Conductor Manager with London Midland and West Midlands Trains and as a Station Alliance Lead with West Midlands Rail Executive looking at enhancing stations in the West Midlands.

At her time at Midlands Connect, she spearheaded the rail corridor infrastructure improvement projects on the Nottingham to Lincoln rail corridor and the Black Country-Shrewsbury corridor proposing to increase the line speed and improve journeys. As part of the Access to Rail Programme at Midlands Connect she has overseen Midlands Connect’s Multimodal Interchange at Rail Stations study, looking at best practice and guidance for multimodal interchange in the Midlands.

Robin Lapish

Robin leads the team responsible for delivering business engagement, supply chain risk management and market intelligence for HS2, Britain’s new high-speed, zero carbon railway. Spanning Main Works Civils, Stations, Rolling Stock and Railway Systems categories, Robin engages with a wide range of industry and government stakeholders to communicate HS2 Ltd’s requirements, build relationships and ensure suppliers remain informed, engaged and visible.

Previously, Robin worked in various supply chain, procurement and commercial roles at Transport for London and Crossrail. He is an Ambassador for the Major Projects Association and spent three years as National Co-Chair of G4C (Generation for Change), the young professional network of Constructing Excellence.

Dr. Ann Bicknell

Ann has been the Collaboration Lead for the Midlands Hub of the Environment Agency for over 4 years, for which her co-presenter Grainne Murray is the EA Midlands Hub Management Team Lead. The EA have been operating purpose-driven Collaboration frameworks on regional and national programmes which are aligned with best practice Collaboration principles embodied in the ICE Project 13, ISO44001 and UNSDG17.

This is to ensure that there is a focus on large-scale collective outcomes in addition to outputs in managing complex environmental infrastructure.  We do this by convening and facilitating the kinds of ‘deliberate’ team decision-making needed to collectively derive a pipeline of interdependent projects.  This has resulted in a number of ‘hard won lessons learned from Collaboration in real time delivery’, some of which will be shared in this session.

Ann is an Award-Winning Collaboration and Partnerships specialist – most recently the 2024 LGC Partnership of the Year with ARUP, Shropshire City Council and The EA – and whose impact has previously been recognised with a Queen’s Award for Innovation in Evaluation.