Meet the innovation team

Geraldine graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast with a degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in generator design. She joined United Utilities (subsequently SP Electricity North West) as a graduate engineer and has over 20 years experience in the industry.

After various roles within our policy and standards team, Geraldine joined the innovation team in 2012 to provide technical expertise for our portfolio of low carbon projects. She provides technical input to the development and submission of our flagship innovation projects and was part of the team which gained funding to deliver CLASS, Smart Street, Respond and Celsius. Geraldine project manages a range of NIA projects and helps to transition all of our projects into business as usual.

Ben graduated from UMIST in 2006 and joined Schneider Electric as a bid manager in their project team, tendering for projects ranging from replacement switchgear for United Utilities pumping stations through to parts of the Great Ormond St Hospital refurbishment. After three years he joined United Utilities (subsequently SP Electricity North West) in the system management team. He spent six years working as a 132kV outage planning engineer and a 33kV authorised control engineer before joining the innovation team in April 2015. After having successfully delivered the Smart Street project he is now responsible for a number of other innovation projects.

Delroy started his engineering career in research and development, working as a noise and vibration engineer, designing and building bespoke test rigs to test various equipment, ranging from small circuit boards to prototype sports cars. He then moved into the aerospace industry as an industrial engineer working to optimise machining and manufacturing processes on confidential projects.

In 2012, Delroy joined SP ENW as a project engineer for the operations section and gained operational authorisation to work on the 11kV network. This role involved managing projects to construct, repair, and maintain electrical switchgear, transformers, cables and overhead lines. In 2018 Delroy moved to SP ENW's innovation team as an innovation project manager where he is responsible for the Celsius Project.

Before joining SP Electricity North West Jayne spent five years working in procurement for a printing company and Bunzl Retail, a global industrial equipment supplier.

Since joining SP Electricity North West in March 2011, she has spent three years working in the procurement team where she delivered a financial system training programme, oversaw the procurement transition from cheque to BACS payments and managed a new vendor process. In her current role, Jayne is responsible for procurement, budget management, putting contracts in place and providing event management support.

Christopher has a BEng in Electrical Engineering and a MSc in Engineering Management. He has over 10 years of experience working in the power sector.  Starting his career at SSE in a 2000MW Power Plant, he was responsible for the maintenance and operation of large electrical machines including generators, motors, and transformers. 

Joining SP ENW in 2018 working for the Strategic Planning team, he undertook a wide range of Power System Analysis studies on the 132kV, 33kV and HV network including fault Level, earthing and protection studies whilst also working closely with National Grid ESO on the appendix G process. 

Since joining the Innovation team in 2023 he has been the technical lead on the Bi-TraDER and Net Zero Terrace Projects.

Andy is a chartered engineer with 30 years experience in engineering and managerial roles in the electricity industry. His experience covers a range of areas from generation through to metering, including policy, design, operations, IT and commercial responsibilities.

Andy has spent three years overseeing the innovation programme as PMO lead. He is now using his programme and project management skills as programme manager for our CLASS project.

Rachel is a chartered electrical engineer with extensive experience leading projects across the energy industry. Beginning her career in nuclear power, Rachel held roles in design and project engineering, commissioning, process control, and hazard assessment, before leading a programme of smart grid innovation projects for a major gas and electricity supply business.  

Joining SP Electricity North West in 2014, Rachel managed major projects for connections and network reinforcement schemes, supported delivery of the ED2 business plan and spent time as regulatory compliance manager.

Rachel joined the innovation team in September 2023 to support the development, delivery and completion of projects in our innovation portfolio.