Catherine Doran, CIO, Network Rail

The IT challenge is to exploit the latest remote condition monitoring technology, already used by many utilities organisations, to put intelligence into those assets - the tracks, sleepers, signals - so they can automatically send an alert when there is a problem.

"A message is transmitted through to the centre to say 'I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK... got a headache' so that instead of being entirely reliant on human beings out walking the track and visually inspecting, we start collecting information which in turn will allow us to build very accurate pictures about performance modelling and asset degradation curves," she explains.

Network Rail has just completed the technical evaluation and drawn up a shortlist of companies to work with ahead of a pilot in Scotland during 2009/2010. Doran says it will be a "multiyear effort".

"'Building the brain' is trying to understand not the immediate cause and effect but what are the symptoms that give a true prediction so you can build headroom to go and do something before it happens?" she says. "It's kind of exciting."

Women in IT
Doran admits she loves technology and, despite an arts degree, her early career was spent being a hands-on techie, working at a software house, before spending a decade at BT. She then progressed into more general management and CIO roles after spending time at NatWest, doing another spell at BT and working as CIO for credit card company Capital One.

"I was part of that very charmed generation that came along just as computers were moving from that very back-office, guys with lots of pens, open-toed sandals, not really capable of talking English who sat over 'there' and did things that nobody understood."

Gender hasn't been an issue for Doran's career but, inevitably, as such a high-profile woman in what is still a male-dominated profession she ends up being held up as something of a flag-bearer for the 'women in IT' issue.

"There's a whole bit about us as senior women getting out there and talking to female undergraduates and doing the milk round and saying 'guess what, you don't have to carry a spanner to have a good career and be successful in the world of technology?'" she says.

"It breaks my heart because I think people are cutting themselves off from such great fun."

On the board
Doran's role at Network has recently expanded. Originally appointed as director of information management in 2006, as of this October she is now director of corporate development, a role which retains her IT responsibilities but also includes driving the transformational agenda right across Network Rail, working with other members of the senior team.

"One of the things we've recognised is that when you've got a change agenda of this scale, a challenge of this scale, then simply running faster doing exactly the same thing as you did yesterday and last year and the year before isn't going to deliver the results."

In practical terms that means Doran will now be spending about 70 per cent of her time focusing on the transformational side and 30 per cent on the IT operations, with more responsibility for the day-to-day falling to her own leadership team.

"We need to think about things in a more fundamental way. We are building a transformation agenda for the next five years and my task is to drive that."