David Rollin was born in 1944 and joined British Rail as an Engineering Apprentice at Horwich Works in 1960. He then undertook various workshop supervisory positions before becoming a Project and Sales Engineer at Doncaster from 1970 to 1974. He then began working on the Advanced Passenger Train project until 1979 and became Development Engineer at Doncaster. He was then appointed as New Products Engineer for British Rail Engineering Limited between 1982, working in that capacity until 1985 when became Project Director for the InterCity 225 project. He moved to working as Director of Projects at InterCity Headquarters between 1991 and 1994. He then served as the Managing Director of Interfleet Technology from 1994 to 2013.