Hello World! Launch of Instead Consulting
It is with great pleasure that I can announce to you the launch of Instead Consulting, founded by me, Adam Stead; pun intended indeed and why not!
Many great engineering institutions who we’ve come to know are named after their founders too. From Werner Von Siemens to William Atkins, Ove Arup to Parsons and Brinckerhoff. Even Mr Laing and Mr O’Rourke, Riley Bechtel, George Balfour, Andrew Beatty, Olaf Kier all felt it fitting to name their companies after themselves.
These companies have grown to be well known brands in the world of Engineering and so it seems only fitting that if I was to found a business I should name it after myself.
So… Instead Consulting… ‘Instead’ because we bring an alternative way of thinking about how we can do business in rail; how we design, build and operate the railway; how we use technologies to deliver rail; and how we can give value to our customers (both passenger and freight) in new and innovative ways.
Those of you who have encountered me so far on my career will know me for my ideas, passion, tenacity and ability to articulate a messy problem into communicable plans. I started my career journey as a Systems Engineer working on early GRIP1-3 Programme-level works but I set off to get a broader experience of rail in order that I could be an effective Systems Engineer with a good understanding of the railway. This took me to design of Lineside Telecoms Systems, debugging of an in-service novel Automatic Train Control system, through to multi-disciplinary design management of Civils, Power, Signalling, Track, Telecoms, and all the extra supporting disciplines too.
I got to a point in my system understanding where I thought, rail could be better than this, it should be better than this, and we should be looking outside to new technologies to enable us to work better, to reduce cost, to deliver more, and to improve the experience of our users and employees. But at that point when I decided something should be done no one in rail was really looking too much to other sectors.
So I joined an innovative defence company, a large corporation with a wide diversity of technological, scientific and engineering expertise. It was an enlightening journey where I had the opportunity to work on some defence projects too – taking my capabilities to the gym I termed it but I didn’t want to let go of the rail industry.
Now with my head filled with new knowledge and experiences it’s time to help rail change for the better, getting to the heart of the matter with companies in rail to redefine the way we deliver transport in the 21st century.
Throughout my career journey I’ve been side-tracked from the day job with opportunities to get involved in internal change projects through working on business improvement programmes, group engineering strategies, project execution planning, and bidding for innovative projects. I’ve also spent a lot of time doing business development too and bringing multiple organisations together to innovate together. I really loved all of this work; doing something new, something pioneering, bringing unique ideas and thinking to the fore and providing leadership and inspiration to those around me.
But then there has always comes a time in the corporate world when these projects end and it’s back to the day-job.
So I’ve taken the leap to work for myself. To make the work I love to do the day job by taking charge of my own destiny. I’m currently just one man, but as a prolific networker I bring with me my extensive connections into technology companies, into rail companies, and strategic industry leadership to help deliver whatever capabilities might be needed to deliver your Vision.
I’d love to show you much of the work I’ve done to date, but that was with former employers and I should respect that Instead Consulting has no right to claim it as its own. So for now you’re going to have to trust me a little bit until I can start to showcase some work from my first contracts that I will be landing very shortly from trusted former colleagues.
Watch this space for project updates soon. In the meantime I’m going to be doing a few lessons in Soft Systems Methodology, an elegant method I found whilst working on a project for the Defence Maritime Regulator which changed my way of thinking about messy problems and how to present their solutions in a robust and defensible way.
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