Keynote Speakers

Monday Railway Interchange Mainstage | October 2


Sponsored by: 

Coby Bullard
Senior Vice-President Sales and Marketing – Merchandise, ECP, Transload & Business Development
CPKC
 
Coby Bullard joined CPKC (formerly CP) in December 2017, to lead Sales and Marketing for Merchandise and ECP.

Coby came to CPKC from C.R. England where he was most recently President of the Intermodal division as well as President of Crest Logistics, a wholly owned subsidiary. He also brings almost a decade of railroad experience from BNSF, where he served as Senior Market Manager, Director of Operations Support, and Director of Domestic Intermodal, where he led all sales and marketing functions for its temperature-controlled intermodal and expedited truckload business units. Coby also serves as Chairman of the Board for CPKC's Transcare subsidiary. Coby leverages his impressive history of business development, strategic negotiations, and operations management to build stronger, more sustainable customer relationships and product offerings at CPKC.

Coby holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Texas at Austin as well as a Master's of Business Administration from Texas Christian University.

Coby will provide CPKC’s perspective on the state of the industry and updates on the merger.  Topics will include key challenges and opportunities going forward and how those will affect engineering and purchasing objectives among the industry.

Wednesday Emerging Technologies Panel Discussion |October 4


Sponsored by: 

Emerging technologies occur at rapid speed in the rail industry.  During the Closing General Session, attendees will hear from experts calling attention to exciting developments in alternative fuel technologies globally – depending on government, resources specific to each geography, and other considerations. Join us for this exciting discussion on the developments happening now in alternative fuel technologies!
Panelists

Giles Pettit, MSc, FIMechE, CEng, BEng
Associate Director | Rolling Stock Lead
Arup

Giles is a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and has been a consultant in rolling stock and railway systems over the past two decades. He has worked in specialist Mechanical Engineering, Systems Engineering and Asset Management disciplines over this time for Atkins and then Interfleet / SNC-Lavalin. He has overseen structural designs and refurbishment plans of various fleets in the UK and South-East Asia, turnkey fitment of train systems to legacy fleets and was a technical advisor working on the train specification and procurement of the HS2 fleet. Since joining Arup in 2019, Giles has overseen the formation and growth of the Rolling Stock team, leading work such as technical due diligence for rolling stock acquisitions, rolling stock procurement strategies and the fleet workstream for Operator of Last Resort activities. Giles led Arup’s team providing technical support and design to the Arcola (now Ballard) project to convert a legacy EMU to hydrogen fuel-cell power, and has been at the forefront of hydrogen strategy work for numerous operators and asset owners in Europe and North America.


Luv Sehgal, PE, ENV SP
Senior Rail Engineer
TYLin

Luv Sehgal is a Senior Rail Engineer with experience in design and construction phase services of rail projects. He holds a master’s degree in civil and railroad engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the
NIT Hamirpur, India.

He is presently working with TYLin based in Toronto. Previously he worked with Arup as Senior Rail Engineer in their New York, Boston, and Toronto offices. He has worked on Metrolinx, MTA, MBTA, Amtrak etc projects in various capacities such as Designer, PM/CM, Technical advisors, Owners representatives etc.  His research was focused on track design and high-speed rail infrastructure. He has published and presented his research findings on these topics in AREMA, WRI, IPWE, MHSRA etc. He has previously worked with WAPCOS Ltd, DMRC, Indian Railways also. 

Luv’s rail technical background, experience in the use of innovative technologies and attention to detail, allow him to bring value to every project in which he is involved.  He is an active member of AREMA and has presented his work almost every year at the conference.


Devin Sprinkle
AVP Environment, Hazardous Materials and Climate Change
Association of American Railroads

Devin Sprinkle is a passionate and proven leader with over 25 years of experience in the North American railroad industry specializing in the areas of environmental regulatory rulemaking, compliance, assessment, remediation, and emergency response. He currently holds the position of AVP Environment, Hazardous Materials and Climate Change at the Association of American Railroads in Washington, D.C. His responsibilities include the development and coordination of industry policy regarding risk management, environmental and hazardous materials issues including those regarding the transportation of nuclear waste. He is responsible for identifying both short- and long-term risk management, environmental and hazardous materials issues that affect the rail industry and advising member railroads of the potential impact of regulatory and legislative issues.
 
Moderator

Walter F. Bleser, II, PE
President
ARE Corporation

Walt Bleser, PE, currently serves as President of ARE Corporation and remains Principal of Unabridged Structures, LLC.  Prior to this role he was the President of SENSR Monitoring Technologies, LLC. He has over twenty years in the North American railway vertical working with every Class I railroad, major commuter railroad and several transit agencies. Named a Progressive Railroading Rising Stars Top 20 under 40 in 2013 and again an honorable mention by Railway Age for Top 20 under 40 in 2019. He has done everything from design and inspection of structures to implementing technology that makes railroads more efficient through the use of structural health monitoring systems and cloud based bridge asset management programs.  Walt is an active participant in AREMA, currently serving as a Director, Structures Functional Group on the Board of Directors.  He is the previous Chair of Committee 7, Timber Structures, and a subcommittee chairman of Committee 10, Structures Maintenance & Construction, aiding in the production of the organization’s Bridge Management Best Practices.