Mike is a highly experienced senior consultant in strategic transport-related projects, and has extensive International consulting experience in projects related to railways, infrastructure, interoperability, inland waterways, and roads. He has worked in the railway industry since 1971, and has been a director of his own transport consultancy since 2002. Prior to that, he was an independent consultant in Switzerland after leaving British Rail in 1996, having been their freight representative there since 1982. Mike’s work in Switzerland involved contract negotiations with clients in a number of European countries, as well as representational activities. His consultancy work has involved input to a number of European Union projects, as well as other single and multi-country projects. Mike has considerable experience of interviewing interested parties in the freight industry, both in the course of his work for British Rail and as a researcher in consultancy projects. As a former traffic controller, he has knowledge of railway operating procedures and constraints, and has a broad knowledge of railways in general. He also has a less detailed knowledge of the road haulage, shipping and aviation industries.

Mike's activities since 1976 have involved daily use (both written and spoken) of English, German, French, and, occasionally Italian.

Key achievements have included input to the major study for the EC on The Integration of National Conventional Rail Systems, whose recommendations were adopted almost en bloc in both the EC’s Communication on integrating conventional rail systems and their Directive on the interoperability of the trans-European conventional rail system (2001/16/EC), and input to the EU TACIS Policy Advice Programme; Analysis of the Electronic Logistics Services in Russia, which recommended methods of modernising border crossing procedures for freight .

Mike has been subsequently active as a professional translator from German and French to English since 2007, with a number of clients in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Mike currently uses Trados Suite 2017 and Microsoft Office 365 (2016) and is also handling railway technical and other specialist and general translations from both German and French to English.