60-second interview A QUICK CHAT WITH... Iain Rae WORDS: ANDREW BENNETT PHOTO: CORDELIA NOBLE Iain Raes career has seen him hitching a Eurostar cab ride from London to Paris after repairing the rolling stock, cutting his engineering teeth at British Rail and, lately, helping Scottish passenger rail operator ScotRail battle the challenges of winter. Now heading SNC-Lavalins business in Scotland as Operational Development Director, Iain talks about knowing your customers and comedy classic The Naked Gun. Click to navigate to questions 12345 snclavalin.com Iain Raes career has seen him hitching a Eurostar cab ride from London to Paris after repairing the rolling stock, cutting his engineering teeth at British Rail and, lately, helping Scottish passenger rail operator ScotRail battle the challenges of winter. Now heading SNC-Lavalins business in Scotland as Operational Development Director, Iain talks about knowing your customers and comedy classic The Naked Gun. Click to navigate to questions 12345 One of your recent projects was helping ScotRail prepare its eets and depots for winter. Can you tell us more? The key here was starting early, as time has a habit of catching up. Some of the practical solutions we implemented included installing bafe plates in front of the vehicles air horns, and trunk master air dryers onto trains to help improve braking performance. SNC-Lavalin has hundreds of great engineers, so I could phone a friend for advice about braking systems, doors and so on. The expertise of our wider team makes us really strong. Click to navigate to questions 12345 What has inspired you most during 2017? For our family holiday, we went to California. The sheer scale and size of Yosemite Valley in the National Park struck me, and made me think the world is an inspiring place. Professionally, our annual SNC-Lavalin Scottish hill walk in May is great for team building and enables us to get closer to our clients too, some of whom have become friends and join us for the event. Click to navigate to questions 12345 What makes you laugh out loud? Spontaneous ofce banter. People in our ofce are quite open, and come out with good oneliners. On TV, I love the silly humour of the Naked Gun lms, starring the late Leslie Nielsen. Click to navigate to questions 12345 What makes you proud to work for the rail industry? Even though the UK railway has been privatised and comprises different companies, there is still a common purpose about having to deliver services for customers. I love the partnership and being able to work together... when you are on a project there are no barriers; rather than it being a customer-supplier relationship, it is more about the team effort. Click to navigate to questions 12345