Steve Howes

Managing Director Rail Settlement Plan

Steve Howes has worked in the field of the application of information technology in the transportation and defence sectors for more than thirty years, the last fifteen of which have been spent exclusively working in the transport sector.

Whilst at WS Atkins, where he was Managing Director of the Transport Systems business unit, a consultancy business working for a large number of public transport authorities, he represented that company on the Board of Transys, the PFI consortium developing and operating the Oyster system in London. He was also instrumental in forming a joint venture with Thales and KBR which won the DIRECTS road user charging feasibility contract with the DfT. Later, at Serco, Steve was responsible for the Integrated Transport Division which included overseeing the £160M PFI contract with the Highways Agency to design, build and operate the National Traffic Control Centre, and for operating one of the contact centres providing call handling services for National Rail Enquiries.

Now at ATOC, Steve is Managing Director of Rail Settlement Plan, responsible for the design, build and operation of information systems providing a range of common services to the passenger rail operators, covering revenue collection, allocation and settlement, retail support services such as the provision of fares and timetable information to ticketing and information systems, and ‘Ticket on Departure’ and seat reservations capabilities. He has been closely involved with the introduction of smartcard technology to the railway, covering both ITSO and Oyster, sitting on the ITSO Board, and ‘ITSO on Prestige’ Project Board and leading the negotiations with TfL on Oyster PAYG.

Steve Howes is a graduate in Mathematics, a Chartered Electrical Engineer and a Fellow of the British Computer Society.