Highways England have today announced the appointment of Jim O’Sullivan as their new Chief Executive.
Sue Percy, CIHT Chief Executive said:

“CIHT welcome Jim into this role at such an exciting time for Highways England and our industry as a whole. We look forward to continuing our close relationship and joint working with Highways England across a variety of projects. We are looking forward to having the opportunity to demonstrate how our members and the Institution can support Highways England in the delivery of its challenging brief.”

Jim will be formally taking over from Graham Dalton on 1 July 2015. He will lead the company with responsibility for delivering £11 billion of improvements to England’s motorways and major roads by 2020. Highways England will be responsible for delivering on time and on budget more than 100 roads schemes in the government’s Roads Investment Strategy, resulting in safer, more reliable and much improved journeys on England’s busiest roads.

Jim is an engineer bringing leadership experience from a broad range of safety critical transport and other infrastructure businesses including British Airways, Heathrow Airport Holdings and the utility industries.

He was most recently managing director of the airports division at Heathrow Airport Holdings (BAA) between October 2012 and December 2014. He was previously managing director at Edinburgh Airport and technical standards and assurance director at Heathrow Airport Holdings (BAA). He spent 4 years at Central Networks (Eon UK) as capital delivery and field force director, and he worked for British Airways for 14 years between 1988 and 2002, serving some of that time as chief engineer for Concorde and as technical director for the airline.