60 seconds with...
60 seconds with
Thomas Brewster
Service delivery manager at Transport for London
Q How do you spend most of your
time at work? AKick-starting, scoping and
developing technological projects
that will deliver benefi ts to Surface
Transport in TfL. My role mostly
involves representing the needs of
our business customers, and getting
the right people and teams together
to develop and deliver solutions.
Q Describe your most
AOverseeing unforgettable project. the implementation
of digital mobile radio (DMR)
for our fl eet of 9,500 buses. The
delivery involved ensuring operational
readiness to 23,000 users, and an asset
refresh on buses and response vans at
radio base sites and data centres. As an
added constraint, the delivery was within
the confi nes of an infrequency migration
to a live 24/7 system.
For the cutover, we took a (de-risked)
big bang approach. In the early hours of
30 November 2018, we forced one of
the world’s largest bus fl eets to re-register
onto our DMR network. As the sites
began to quickly load up with thousands
of registrations from our buses, it was an
unforgettable moment seeing a project I
had been working on with a number of
outstanding people (TfL, Tait
Communications and subcontractors)
come to life right in front of us.
QWhat’s the most unusual thing
you’ve seen while working in the
radio sector? AWhen visiting existing (and
prospective) radio base sites, my
job has taken me to some amazing
vantage points and rooftops across
London. The most memorable was
conducting a site survey on the roof of
122 Leadenhall Street with over 50 miles
of visibility that day.
Q What advice would you give to
someone who’s starting their fi rst
job in the industry? ABe a sponge. I’ve been most
fortunate to work alongside some
incredibly knowledgeable people from
the telecoms industry, who have been
kind enough to share their expertise and
experiences. When you listen to them, it
never ceases to amaze me where a career
in communications can take you, and how
radio solutions have been deployed in
such a wide variety of contexts.
There are many others in TfL too,
but from the industry I have learned a
lot from the following: Colin Bent; Jamie
Bishop; Phil Cooke; Christian Davis; John
Gardener; Michael Goldring;
David Helfrich; Richard Moot; and
David Turner.
Q How has your role changed
since you started working
within the radio industry? AMy role has developed from a
position that originally facilitated
change to playing an active role in
shaping the way new services will
operate. I recently delivered our new
Push-to-talk over Cellular solution
to TfL’s Surface Transport, where I
played a key role with our supplier
(Tait Communications) in creating one
of the most technologically complex
integrations of Push-to-talk over Cellular
with DMR.
Q What do you do in your free time
to relax? AFree time is a rather scarce
resource, but outside of work you’ll
fi nd me mucking in at one of my brother-
and sister-in-law’s gyms (Flow London
and Fly London). When I do take a
moment, I’m a keen photographer, love
travelling and, following a life-changing
rugby injury, have reinvented myself as
an amateur runner, completing
marathons in Berlin, Edinburgh, London
and New York.
Thomas joined TfL’s graduate
programme in 2012 and played a key
role managing the transition of its critical
comms system to digital radio, and
delivery of Surface Transport’s PoC
service. He will be presenting with Jamie
Bishop at BAPCO 2020.
26 February 2020 | www.landmobile.co.uk | Twitter:@Land_Mobile
/www.landmobile.co.uk