Who we are

Amar Qureshi
Amar is CEO and Co-owner of Agilia and has spent 20 years developing and delivering infrastructure projects. Previously as Commercial Director for the £4.1 billion Thames Tideway Tunnel, he led the team developing the innovative and ground-breaking delivery model. He also led the structuring and the procurement of the main construction contracts – the largest contracts to be let in the water sector. Subsequently, as Major Projects Director for Thames Water, he oversaw the delivery of over £3 billion pounds of capital investment including the early and enabling works for the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

He started his career in the City, with Allen & Overy, advising banks and sponsors on UK and international projects. He also spent time at HM Treasury where he worked on numerous projects, including responsibility for developing and delivering the commercial and contractual framework for a multi-billion programme of investment in infrastructure.

Mike Pugsley
Mike is CFO and Co-owner of Agilia and is an experienced Finance/Commercial Director and negotiator. Mike has a strong track record of successfully developing innovative and ground-breaking infrastructure projects. Having worked in infrastructure development and delivery at senior board level for the past 20 years, initially at PWC and then as the Finance and Commercial Director of Local Partnerships (a 50/50 joint venture between HMG and the Local Government Association), he has rare experience that spans the entire lifecycle of infrastructure projects from project initiation through to operational expiry.

Mike is able to win the trust and confidence of all major stakeholders with experience in the public sector (central government, non-governmental department bodies and local authorities) and the private sector, having worked closely with them in development and delivering major infrastructure projects and programmes – including the £4.1 billion Lower Thames Crossing Project as well as Thames Tideway Tunnel and the multi-billion Waste Infrastructure Delivery Programme.

Fred Maroudas
Fred is Agilia’s Chairman. He has 25 years of experience in the financing, delivery and management of the UK’s strategic infrastructure and Public Private Partnerships. Fred has held senior executive and non-executive positions in the UK Government and in many of the UK’s largest infrastructure companies, most recently as head of rail and airports at the IPA. Fred created ground-breaking and award winning finance platforms as CFO of Eversholt Rail, as Director of Funding for Network Rail and as Finance Director for BAA / Heathrow. He was named by Euroweek as one of the 25 most influential players in the European capital markets. He is also Chairman of The Day News and Media Group and a pension trustee for the Institute of Cancer Research.

Andrew Rose
Andrew Rose currently acts in Non-Executive, Senior Adviser and Trustee roles across various sectors including infrastructure and social impact investing. In his Executive career he was CEO of a number of companies in both the public and private sectors.

His CEO roles included the Homes & Communities Agency, the country’s housing, land and regeneration agency, now known as Homes England. In this role he created the country’s housing bank which has a multiple billion-pound investment portfolio dedicated to supporting Government’s policy of increasing housing supply. He has also been Chief Executive of Infrastructure UK (IUK) in HM Treasury. IUK produced the country’s first National Infrastructure Plan. Most recently he was the inaugural Chief Executive of the Global Infrastructure Investor Association (GIIA), a membership body representing investors in global infrastructure and leading advisers to the sector. He was in this role until the end of 2019.

Andrew’s other private sector roles have included Managing Director, Investment Banking, CIBC World Markets, where he established and led the Canadian bank’s European infrastructure investment banking practice, and where he worked for 17 years in both the UK and USA.  

He now has a portfolio of roles. He sits on the Department for International Trade Capital Investment Advisory Board and is a Senior Adviser to Agilia Infrastructure Partners and a start-up enterprise software mental wellbeing company. He has recently been appointed as a Non-Executive Director of The Oversight Trust, formerly Big Society Trust which has a governance role for four social impact investment companies including Big Society Capital. 

Michael Gerrard
Mike is a Senior Adviser to Agilia. He has 30 years of financial and management experience in global infrastructure investment. He has held a number of senior positions, including as an assistant director of Morgan Grenfell plc, a director of HM Treasury Taskforce, and deputy CEO and later CEO of Partnerships UK plc. Mike has a breadth of experience across a range of economic and social infrastructure sectors and has been involved in some of the largest infrastructure projects in the UK, including as Managing Director of Thames Tideway Tunnel. He is currently chairman of the infrastructure investment company, INPP Limited

Anne Tiedemann
Anne Tiedemann is a Senior Adviser to Agilia and has more than 30 years’ experience in both strategic and operational management at a senior level and in an international environment spanning the US, Latin America, the UK, Middle East, Russia, Africa, and Asia Pacific. Anne has a significant track record of delivering local capability and profitable growth, while positioning the organisation to operate sustainably.

Sebastian Pampe
Seb is the Director responsible for Project Management at Agilia and has worked on some of the UK’s most iconic infrastructure projects over the last 17 years, which include Thames Tideway Tunnel and Heathrow’s Terminal 2 and 5. He is a qualified Quantity Surveyor who has discovered his passion for project and programme management.

Combining his skill set of project management and commercial management has enabled Seb to gain extensive experience across a range of sectors and international locations. Seb is currently working for the Home Office on the procurement for the new Emergency Services Network. Before this Seb was a partner at Arcadis (EC Harris LLP) and led key infrastructure accounts.

Afzal Ginwalla
Afzal is a civil engineer and Assistant Director at Agilia, with project management experience in the water and transport sectors. He has managed the conceptual design, environmental appraisal and cost estimating of major water supply expansion schemes such as reservoirs, pipeline transfers and desalination plants. Afzal has also authored regulatory documents for WRMP19 and PR19 for several water companies. He began his career as a design assurance engineer in the major projects directorate of Thames Water focusing on large flood alleviation schemes.

He holds an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management from the University of Oxford and an MEng in Civil Engineering from the University of Manchester.

James Lee
James is the Commercial Director at Agilia and has over 15 years professional experience in the infrastructure sector and has worked as a financial and commercial adviser, helping to develop a number of PFI/PPP contracts and has worked on a number of high profile infrastructure projects such as Lower Thames Crossing, Crossrail and Thames Estuary Flood Defence Project.

James is a Chartered Accountant (Fellow) and has previously worked at Local Partnerships as the Commercial Director as well as the Cabinet Office providing high profile briefings to Cabinet members and special advisers. (His core skills include financial management, financial analysis, risk management, managing commercial programmes, PFI/PPP contract development, contract analysis, financial model development / review, negotiation and business case development and scrutiny.

Garry Connolly
Garry is the Legal Director at Agilia and has more than 15 years’ experience working on ground-breaking infrastructure projects and programmes in the UK and European markets. He has provided commercial, strategic and legal advice to project sponsors, funders, contractors and government departments in a diverse range of sectors, including transport, tunnelling, water, energy and waste.

Garry is currently advising Defra on its waste PFI programme and acting as Commercial Adviser to CGMA on the New Covent Garden Market development. Previously, Garry has worked at leading law firms Ashurst (London) and McCann FitzGerald (Dublin).

Frances Lyons
Frances is Company Secretary to Agilia and part of the Legal team. Frances has 14 years of experience as a contract solicitor with a diverse range of expertise, including PFI and PPP project contracts, across the public and private sectors in the infrastructure and energy industries. Frances has a proven practice and academic background enabling her to perform complex advisory roles within large scale commercial organisations.

Andy Forestiero
Andy Forestiero is a Project Director at Agilia and Chartered Mechanical Engineer with nearly 40 years client-side experience in the water sector, gained both in the UK and overseas. His experience spans the complete project spectrum from business development through to commissioning and handover of capital schemes, delivered through traditional and collaborative forms of working with the supply chain.

Andy’s areas of expertise include the management of complex programmes, stakeholder engagement and team leadership. He has worked on some of the UK’s most prestigious infrastructure programmes including London 2012, Crossrail and the Thames Tideway Tunnel. On the latter, Andy spent three years in Thames Water’s Client team developing the technical aspects of the project and then another two and a half years heading the company’s responsibilities for delivery.

Nicholas Williams
Nick is the Corporate Manager for Agilia with experience of administrating and managing business overseas and in the UK. Nick’s wide range of experience and technical ability have given him the opportunity to work across public finance and consulting roles in various sectors, including working with the Home Office and Police Forces under the nationwide programmes. Nick holds a BSc in Physics from Queen Mary University and is currently a part-qualified Accountant.

Christopher Wright
Chris is an Assistant Manager in Agilia with experience in data analysis and evaluation, as well as project management which he developed during his scientific research career. Having transitioned into infrastructure delivery, Chris has provided detailed support across the water, energy and transport sectors. Chris holds a PhD and Master’s in Chemistry from the University of Oxford.

Henry Sutcliffe
Henry is an experienced project manager specialising in nationally significant infrastructure schemes. His track record includes leading a multidisciplinary team in the development of a multi-billion-pound rail infrastructure programme to connect Heathrow Airport to new domestic markets and leading the cross-Whitehall engagement and communications strategy for Sir Peter Hendy’s review into the re-planning of Network Rail’s investment programme.

He has worked at the heart of government for over a decade and has extensive experience of policy development, commercial negotiations and advising Cabinet Ministers. This included brokering agreements between Departments to fund key government priorities, such as free school meals and the carrier bag tax.

Gareth Russell-Hughes
Gareth is a Manager at Agilia with experience in a wide range of management and technical roles. Gareth has a background working in the financial sector and has worked across all stages of a project with success in providing high quality change management, controls, programme development and systems for managing information. Gareth holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Liverpool.

Ghalia Albarazi 

Ghalia is a Manager at Agilia and has over 5 years working within the water sector. She has experience working in operations of wastewater networks as well as assisting in water resource management plans and feasibility studies. She has worked in a wide range of areas, from engaging with SMEs on how they are filling the innovation gap to meet the societal needs within the water industry, to assisting in drought permit applications. Ghalia has experience in project management in environment led projects, such as optioneering assessment for chalk stream enhancements and in her current role working with Portsmouth Water on their strategic winter storage reservoir.

Ghalia is a civil engineer, completing her MEng in Civil Engineering from the University of Manchester and also holds an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management from Oxford University.

Malcolm Orford

Malcolm is a Project Director at Agilia and a qualified Civil Engineer with over 30 years experience in delivering complex infrastructure, operating both client-side and as part of contracted delivery functions. In addition to leading multiple programmes of capital delivery Malcolm has led large teams, supporting and assuring them to successful delivery. In addition to 20 years’ experience in the water sector Malcolm has successfully delivered complex programmes in the transport and mobile telecoms industries.

Most recently Malcolm spent 8 years on £4.1bn Thames Tideway. As Head of Construction he took the project through the Development Consent Order 2008 Planning Act Process, before moving to become Deputy Delivery Manger for the circa £1bn Tideway Central contract to construct 13km of 7.2m diameter tunnel. For the last three years Malcolm has been Head of Consents, leading the delivery of the Development Consent Order planning process for the £6.5bn Lower Thames Crossing, providing a critical new road connection between Kent and Essex.

Gordon Greer
Gordon is Agilia’s Chief Operating Officer. He has been a qualified Chartered Accountant for over 24 years and prior to joining Agilia was Finance Director for over 13 years at a property investment, development and construction group, where he was responsible for the whole HR/Finance function consisting of 10 companies and over 130 employees. Gordon spent the first 12 years of his career working in public practice training as a Chartered Accountant and qualifying in 1995 and also spent 4 years working for PwC within the Public Sector department.