MA (Cantab) MIEE CEng
Managing Director
Smartran is led by Managing Director Kevin Farquharson. Kevin’s background is in managing multi-million pound projects and contracts for blue chip companies in transportation, utility, telecoms and oil industries.
After reading engineering at Cambridge, he was elected a Chartered Engineer and to full membership of the IET. Kevin Farquharson is an accomplished Programme Manager, Change Director, Interim Manager and Consultant with over 30 years wide-ranging experience successfully implementing and managing multi-million pound IT programmes, procurements and projects. He has been responsible for business strategy development, ticketing scheme design, managing complex contracts, managing multiple suppliers and managing stakeholder relationships. He has managed large contracts and business change initiatives through negotiation, development, acceptance testing and implementation stages. He has helped his clients increase revenues and reduce costs by many £millions.
In transportation he has worked for Operators, Local Authorities, PTE’s, service providers and suppliers as well as being responsible for implementing cross-industry projects with multiple suppliers and scheme procurements. His knowledge and experience covers all methods of ticketing (ie staffed ticket office, web, mobile, self-service, ticket collection, self-print, barcode to mobile, Oyster, cEMV UKCards Models, proprietary and ITSO smartcard), ticket types, retail channels and revenue protection (on train, gates, inspectors and data analysis).
Kevin is an active member of the Transport Card Forum (TCF) and has providing significant input to Local Authority Smartcard Standards, UK Cards Assoc and ITSO Supplier Working Groups.
Kevin created Smartran to bring the best skills and experience to bear on smart card initiatives, electronic payment mechanisms and financial settlement systems. Having programme managed the introduction of major new settlement systems for the rail industry and advised senior decision makers in ATOC and the DFT on the future ticketing, he is uniquely placed to advise organisations on the application of smart card technology.