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Friday, March 29, 2024
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Home Guest Writers Mosaic Rail takes agile signalling design services overseas

Mosaic Rail takes agile signalling design services overseas

Signalling design consultancy Mosaic Rail has set its sights on overseas growth, with a subsidiary company in Hyderabad, India, and ongoing projects in Australia

Crewe-based Mosaic specialises in signalling, providing everything from plans and sketches to full-scale signalling detailed design services. The growing SME takes on the kind of ancillary work often overlooked by larger suppliers, and is gaining a reputation for cost effective, high-quality results.

Since its launch in 2017, it has undertaken work on behalf of Network Rail, Linbrooke, VolkerRail, and a range of other major suppliers. The business operates a scalable deployment model allowing them to mobilise quickly and flexibly.

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Founders Matt Wilton and Tim Samuel have taken a similarly innovative approach to the offshoring process. The design engineers decided to launch their Indian sister company, Mosaic Rail PVT, after working with various offshore partners in the past.

“We were so impressed by the skillset of some the workforce and we were fortunate that our vision appealed to them also” Tim explained. With the model that the Tier Ones were employing, anything that was considered relatively complex was kept in the UK, and anything that was more routine was sent offshore. “We felt that approach didn’t breed a sense of belonging in the project and was a very siloed mentality” Matt explained.

Tim and Matt ensured that Mosaic Rail PVT’s engineers are involved in development and decision-making, gaining a broader understanding of the projects they worked on.

“So far we’re finding that it’s working really well, and our team have risen to the challenge over the last few years,” Tim added. “It’s created more rounded-out engineers”

They were also impressed by the teams’ knowledge of UK rail infrastructure. “These engineers are very competent in equipment that, to a degree, we’re losing the skillset to design in the UK, because of technological advances and also historical lack of investment in the training of UK engineers” Tim explained.

While Mosaic Rail PVT has its own senior leadership team, it is effectively the Indian arm of Mosaic Rail. Tim and Matt invested heavily in the company during the early stages of the pandemic.

“We believe that we were one of the few companies in mid-2020 that were recruiting and investing quite heavily in India, and we grew from 11 to about 25. “Our design team continues to grow and this has enabled us to continue providing quality services to multiple clients in the UK and Overseas,” Matt said.

This vision has also spurred the duo to explore opportunities in Australia, where billions of dollars are being invested in their rail infrastructure.

“We’ve been providing services to the equivalent of a Tier one in Australia for about two years now, and we’ve had some very fruitful discussions with a number of other companies over the last few months,” Matt added. “We will be going into other states once we can agree terms.”

To date, Mosaic has delivered a range of smaller projects for this major Australian company, building relationships and trust.

“We’ve had a small team on Australian works, on an ongoing project basis, but now our Clients are looking for us to support with a larger team,” Matt said. “This substantial increase in resource demand could potentially go on for the next two to five years providing we keep delivering the work to our high standards and to the Clients satisfaction”.

If its efforts continue to pay off, Mosaic will look to expand into Australia, opening a second subsidiary company. It all adds up to an ambitious and targeted growth strategy for this dynamic SME.

“It’s about targeting markets that are prepared to invest, and Australia is one,” he added. “North America is potentially another area that we are investigating.”

Photo credit: Shutterstock

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