Name: Richard Rundle

Title: IT director

Company: British Airports Authority (BAA)

What they say about him: "Richard is the archetypal solid, dependable IS leader who balances innovation with standardisation, strategy with delivery."

BAA was bought by Spanish construction business Ferrovial for £10.3bn last year and IT director Richard Rundle's challenges under the new owners are to help simplify the business, deliver higher levels of service and security to passengers, improve return on investment and manage the major IT investment associated with the Heathrow Terminal 5 project.

Rundle joined BAA in 1995 and is responsible for all the IT and telecommunications across the airport management company. He has been a driver of change through his strong leadership, aligning BAA's IT investments to strategic goals and delivering year-on-year reductions in IT costs. BAA's IT has also been consistently benchmarked as being among the best - in terms of best practice - in the FTSE 100.

Rundle has a wide range of experience in people management, engineering and logistics across the manufacturing, distribution and retail sectors and he has held a number of board-level and director positions during his career at Unigate, Wincanton, Hunter Saphir and THF.

A fan of musicals, golf and Tottenham Hotspur football club, Rundle also contributes to the wider IT industry and is a member of a number of professional institutions and supplier advisory groups, as well as being a non-exec director of a tech start-up company.