Rising Star Award: Nisha Damhar

British Parking Awards 2024

Nisha Damhar has risen to the status of associate director in WSP Liveable Places after just under six years in the parking industry. Her parking journey started in 2018 with back office roles at both Hampshire County and Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole Councils, both of whom she has retained positive working relationships with since joining WSP.

Damhar joined WSP in 2021 as an associate consultant with responsibility for leading the Liveable Places Traffic Order workstream and delivery of the Westminster traffic order services contract.

It is a high-profile role and Damhar took it on at a critical time. She made an immediate positive impact on team performance, morale and overall contract delivery for Westminster, a key account for the company. She also line manages six staff and oversees the wider traffic order workstream which includes staff in three offices in the UK.

In her three years at WSP Liveable Places, Damhar has helped resecure the Westminster City Council Traffic Order contract which she manages and led the Liveable Places Traffic Order workstream, receiving the Parking Team of the Year trophy at the British Parking Awards in 2022.

Her hard work and achievements to date saw her promoted to associate director at the end of 2023. WSL technical director Ollie Miller says: “Despite being relatively new to her parking career, Nisha is a well-established and highly respected member of the wider Liveable Places and Mobility services. She has demonstrated a commitment to good practice and outstanding performance on numerous occasions. Her ability to break down complex issues and describe them in non-technical terms that a wide audience can understand has been invaluable in bringing her team and colleagues with her with the service improvements she has introduced in her time at WSP.

“An example of her consistent application of good practice is her delivery of the Westminster Traffic Order contract. Using Nisha’s newly devised reporting queries in the project management database and various tracking spreadsheets, reports and minutes, we can now efficiently extract data on key performance information. Where previously this was a manual and time-consuming process, thanks to Nisha it is faster and allows her to spend more time using that information to improve the service further.”

Damhar introduced an innovation spreadsheet where team members can contribute ideas and suggestions for innovative improvements which may streamline the service and/or cut costs for Westminster whilst maintaining service standards. In order to ensure there is tangible benefit in implementing any of the suggested innovation improvements Nisha introduced a ranking system which considers a range of criteria, including cost and complexity, risk and dependency to identify those concepts that are deliverable.

Damhar has also been proactive in liaising across WSP colleagues nationwide to resolve resourcing pressures that occasionally arise in Traffic Orders, which is a very niche specialism. It is that kind of attitude, acting without ego but with a total commitment to delivering for her clients that has allowed Damhar and the team to improve the delivery of the Westminster Traffic Order contract and has allowed her to emerge as a talent and future leader of WSP and rising star of the parking industry.

Miller said: “Despite her limited number of years, Nisha Damhar has proved herself fantastically capable at managing people, leading teams, and nurturing and developing those staff she is responsible for. Within the WSP Liveable Places team, graduates and apprentices will work on traffic order projects that Nisha leads on, and she is always generous with her time in helping develop their understanding and competence in the field. In a busy and fast paced role, it is not always easy, but Damhar finds the time and prioritises developing those around her, which is brilliant.

“We have successful and long-established programmes within WSP for mentoring, leadership academies, pathways to chartership and talent nurturing which results in very good rates of staff retention. These valued programmes are utilised in nurturing rising stars such as Nisha to achieve their potential. In addition to our standard training and development matrices covering general management, systems, project management and financial management we tailor additional training to the discrete needs of working in parking.”

In addition to her own training, Damhar has offered internal training sessions to spread knowledge and understanding of parking, traffic enforcement and Traffic Orders. This has proven to be successful, has broadened her WSP colleagues’ skill sets and opened further opportunities for individuals to develop within the business.

“Nisha takes a mature and proactive approach to her own career development and training needs and will be looking to build on her contract management skills over the coming year with some additional training to complement her current ‘on the job’ learning. Nisha is innovative, hard working and very talented. In only five years in the parking industry, to have achieved what she has achieved is incredible. She is definitely a rising star and I look forward to seeing how far she chooses to go in her parking career,” concluded Miller.

Damhar plays a wider role in that she leads on social value delivery for the wider engineering service delivery for the Westminster City Council contract. For example, she proactively sought out a local Westminster-based charity for which WSP could fundraise and organised a team bake sale event in WSP’s Chancery Lane office. That single event raised over £550 for the Cardinal Hume Centre, a fantastic local charity helping vulnerable children and families in the City. Miller says:

“Nisha used the event as an opportunity to chat informally with our junior and new colleagues, helping them feel welcome and important within WSP, which was really appreciated.”

Craig Sutherland, technical director, WSP, adds: “Nisha is an incredible talent and a great asset to WSP. I have had the pleasure or working with her and have witnessed first-hand her talent, calmness under pressure and innovative approaches to tackling complex challenges she has brought to the organisation.”

Matthew Sharples, operations officer and TMO contract manager, Westminster City Council, says: “I have the highest of respect for Nisha who conducts herself with the upmost professionalism. She is extremely knowledgeable of the service and a pleasure to work with. She always goes above and beyond and can be depended upon at all times.”

Winner’s words

Nisha Damhar: “I’ve only been in parking for a few years. In that time I’ve gone from a sleepy little seaside town to Hampshire County Council and then to WSP where I now manage that traffic audit team for WSP Liveable Space. I feel really humbled. I feel like I have come so far.”

The British Parking Awards

Created and presented by Parking Review magazine, the British Parking Awards are an independent competition. The awards recognise the leading examples of car park management, enforcement, design and team work.

The British Parking Awards 2024 ceremony took place at the Royal Lancaster London on 13 September.

Read and download the 2025 WINNERS EDITION of PARKING REVIEW by clicking HERE

To find out more about the competition and next year’s event check out the official website.
www.britishparkingawards.uk