Francis GRASS has been appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Office of COLAS RAIL in January 2017. COLAS RAIL is the railway infrastructure subsidiary of the COLAS Group, has a workforce of 5,000 and builds, renovates and maintains interurban railway networks (new high-speed lines, conventional tracks) and urban tram and metro lines. Francis Grass, 48, graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Industries (ENSAIS), and joined COLAS as an intern at COLAS Martinique in 1993. He became a site manager in 1994 then manager for COLAS Gabon in 1996. In 1999, he joined the Ribal Group (COLAS Guyana) as a works engineer before being promoted Director in 2000. Seven years later, Francis Grass was appointed to head development at the Colas Central European Division and then became Construction Manager and Assistant Project Manager of the construction of the M6-M60 motorway in Hungary. In 2010, he was appointed CEO of the concessionary company Mecsek, which operates the M6-M60, before becoming CEO of COLAS Centre-West in 2012.