Rail-native expertise, AI-native execution.
Domain knowledge, engineering capability, AI-native discipline. Most advisors live in one. We operate where the three meet.
A small core team, deliberately. Rail engineering judgement and AI engineering capability in the same room, supported by a wider bench we bring in where it counts.
Bill Guo FICE CEng MEng
A decade on both sides of the rail delivery table. Imperial MEng. Network Rail Designated Project Engineer. Engineering Manager at Jacobs, leading significant programmes on HS2 as Engineering Lead. Director at an SME design consultancy. Same patterns kept repeating across every seat: senior engineers buried in compliance admin, quality that depends on who’s in the room, growth that stalls the moment the best people run out of hours.
In 2023 I started using AI to scale a rail business from zero to approximately £1m ARR by 2025, and won one of 16 tactical design partner seats on Southern Renewals Enterprise (SRE). The tools aren’t theory. They’re how I got here.
I founded AutomateX to bring that capability to the rest of UK rail. We automate the X that absorbs senior engineering hours, so the experts can focus on what only they can do.
“We should learn to say no to the things AI can do better.”
Kenneth Yap
Kenneth is a doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, working on agent-oriented programming. His research looks at the internal architecture of AI agents and how they interface with different databases and digital twins. It is the work that determines whether an agent can act reliably inside a physical system, rather than just in a demo. That is the same question sitting underneath assurance in rail.
His engineering background spans research and practice in infrastructure risk on live assets. He worked alongside teams at National Highways on the risk assessment for the A303 twin-bore tunnel next to the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, and wrote the Python tooling used to model how different design options would affect the site. He worked with Geotechnical Consulting Group on the risk assessment for a basement excavation in London, addressing risk to live London Underground tunnels and Thames Water sewers. At Dr Sauer & Partners he built the DATuM dashboard, a tool that forecasts construction duration and diagnoses where delay originates across active tunnel drives.
He trained at Imperial College London and ETH Zürich, MEng in Civil Engineering, First Class Honours. He joins AutomateX to bring that same rigour, engineering judgement paired with the software to scale it, to AI agent systems in rail.
“Building software for infrastructure. One layer at a time.”
The wider bench
Beyond the core team we work with a broad network of collaborators from other businesses and SMEs, engaged under NDA. Every partnership and associate is carefully curated. We look for a deep focus on the railway and the kind of expertise that is genuinely hard to replace, brought in to support the collective capability our clients rely on.
Domain knowledge
Lived delivery and recognition.
- Network Rail DPE · Jacobs Engineering Manager (HS2) · Director, SME design consultancy
- Vice Chair, ICE London Regional Executive Board (REB)
- Young Railway Professional of the Year 2023
- ICE East England Asset Resilience 2025
- SRE Tactical Design Partner
Engineering capability
Formal engineering authority.
- Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE)
- Chartered Engineer (CEng)
- Master of Engineering (MEng), Imperial College London
AI-native
Discipline, not tool-use.
- Agentic AI
- Generative AI
- Machine Learning
- AI Automation
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation
- Knowledge Graph
Trusted across UK rail.
Technical directors, engineering leads and project managers on what the work actually delivered.
The AI workflow reduced the time to produce each deliverable by 35%. That freed our engineers to focus on work that actually needs their judgement, not formatting and admin.
Remarkable performance. He led all the assurance efforts and closed out over 3,000 comments across more than 10,000 deliverables. That level of throughput speaks for itself.
Bill managed to deliver a large volume of station survey work with innovative methods, including drones and artificial intelligence. This allowed us to get the best quality results at a very affordable price.
Incredibly sharp. He understands things fast and sees the bigger picture clearly. His client focus is second to none, and he brings a calm, confident leadership style that helps teams deliver. Always a few steps ahead.