The rail industry in the UK is undergoing vast infrastructure investment and development which is unprecedented. This will create significant demand for new workforce skills but there is currently a large skills gap, with over 4,500 experienced workers in traction and rolling stock due to retire in the next 5 years. Efforts are being made to address this gap through new qualifications, training facilities, and apprenticeship programs. Condition-based maintenance is also being adopted to improve maintenance practices and optimize workforce resources as the industry grows. Collaboration across the industry will be important to ensure the skills gap is filled and the infrastructure investment is not hindered by a lack of qualified workers.

1. Page 186 September 2014
T
hese are exciting times for the
rail industry. Vast infrastructure
investment is set to take place
over the coming years; £38 billion
injected into Network Rail’s track and
stations, the completion of Crossrail,
the billions going into the Underground
network, and the Crossrail2 and HS2
projects. This level of development is
unprecedented in modern times and we
need a workforce with the necessary skills
and qualifications to meet the demand.
How big is the skills gap?
EAL, the specialist awarding organisation
for industry qualifications, has worked
closely with The NSARE (National Skills
Academy for Railway Engineering) to
ensure these qualifications meet the needs
of employers – needs that are growing
rapidly.
For example, NSARE has identified
almost 35 per cent of the industry’s TRS
(traction and rolling stock) employees are
due to retire in the next five years – that’s
over 4,500 of the 13,500-strong workforce.
Not only will the industry need to replace
skills lost through retirement, upskilling
of the current workforce is also required
to meet and maintain next generation rail
technology.
Apprenticeships need to play an
important part in the industry’s future
skills development. However, the
number undertaking the pathway is
woefully below those in other industries.
If a learner was to start an advanced
apprenticeship next month, they would
not finish until 2017. In addition,
to progress the likely 1,500 Level 4
equivalent supervisors and engineers in
TRS would take at least an additional two
years, raising this to 2019/2020.
Then you have to consider the
shortage of trainers to ensure these
apprentices gain the necessary skills and
knowledge to work in this highly complex
and fast-moving industry. There are clear
gaps and this is also forming bottlenecks
where there are not enough pathways
available to meet demand. This is being
felt not only in TRS but across the railway
engineering skills spectrum.
In electrification, for example, there
is a shortage of experienced OLEC
trainers to meet the needs of training
providers attempting to fulfil contracts
with employers. Signal engineering
and overhead line construction have an
immediate need for a skills injection, as a
result of more of the UK network being
electrified and new track being laid.
What is being done?
In an effort to address this issue, EAL
has developed its new suite of industry-
approved qualifications; Newcastle
Academy is opening a new, state-of-the-
art railway engineering department in
September 2014; NSARE has partnered
with Siemens to launch a TRS Academy
in Northampton in 2015; and a specialist
HS2 Academy is to be officially
announced later this year.
These developments will help increase
the availability and quality of skills,
training and apprenticeships available.
Allan Macdonald and Justin Southcombe explain the importance of filling the skills
gap that exists in the rail industry and the steps that are being made to address it
The future of rolling
stock engineering
Business profile

2. September 2014 Page 187
Business profile
They will also help bring existing training
programmes into the 21st century;
ensuring learners are getting skills and
knowledge of the latest engineering
practices, techniques and technology.
This is a great opportunity to develop
and build a new and exciting structure
of railway engineering qualifications
and training – something EAL and our
partners are working hard to achieve.
The new generation of EAL, industry-
approved qualifications enable employers
to get the workforce they need. In turn,
employers must work closely with
university technical colleges, academies,
colleges and training providers to ensure
that the vast investment in the UK’s
rail infrastructure does not face a skills
shortage.
What should the content be in
the new training and what future
methodologies should be covered so that
the apprentices are prepared during their
career…at least during the first few years?
Condition-based maintenance/predictive
maintenance are certainly some of those
skills.
No longer only an aspiration, it is
being applied using new technologies
by progressive O&Ms (operation and
maintenance services business) around
the world. Proven in other sectors, we
can be sure that adoption will be rapid
once these early rail pioneers show how
to navigate through the regulatory,
commercial and technical challenges.
Cross-sector collaboration
One example of this condition
maintenance is happening now in
Ramsgate and other Southeastern depots
in Kent and London. For five years the
teams have been preparing themselves to
move to a maintenance methodology that
is commonplace in the aviation industry.
Motivated by the appointment of
a new engineering director from BA
maintenance, the organisation, values
and KPIs have slowly been changed so
that maintenance can be delivered on
a basis of what needs to be done rather
than what the 20-year old manufacturers
manual said needed to be done. Bearing
jockeys in the aviation sector are not an
option so RCM has been used for years
to provide the maintenance teams with
accurate information on the status and
remaining life of the components.
Southeastern asked Perpetuum to
develop such a system for rail that would
be easy to use (providing reliable, concise
information) and easy to fit (using
vibration energy harvesters for a fully
wireless solution).
To date, Southeastern has fitted the
Perpetuum system to over 600 cars. New
issues have been raised in this new, live
and information-focused arena – in
many cases, technicians need to pick up a
smartphone rather than a toolbox. But, if
we consider the tech-savvy Y-Generation
that will deliver for us in the future,
doesn’t it make sense to have tools and
ways of working in place that will best
suit their instinctive capabilities?
The impact of condition-based
thinking will be felt across the business
– not only at the bottom line in direct
cost savings from extended overhauls
but on strategic issues like training and
resource deployment. Current scheduled
maintenance plans can dedicate over
20 per cent of their workforce hours
to underframe inspections, a task that
more often than not returns no new
information and therefore provides no
value except peace of mind.
With a reduction in inspections,
the extension of major tasks and the
automation of data capture/diagnostics,
the resources required for traditional
maintenance can be reassigned to more
valuable tasks – or to manage the growth
in the vehicles over the next five years.
Information not data
To do this the information from the
remote condition monitoring system
must be effectively 100 per cent accurate
and simple to use so that it can be
automated or acted upon immediately –
two areas where RCM has struggled over
the past 15 years in the rail industry.
Dedicated RCM specialists, like
Perpetuum, are now emerging that
provide more than a wireless telecoms
backbone, they provide the engineering
expertise in the subsystem alongside
software engineering to create robust
bespoke algorithms that produce
knowledge enriching information – not
data. With robust information and a
condition based approach working on a
vehicle is the exception not the norm …
and safety is improved as the actual status
of the asset can be known in real time.
All successful examples of CBM
involve two elements: one soft, one hard.
The hard are the tools and information
that can be delivered through RCM but
the equally important soft element are
the training, organisation and leadership
changes that must be carried out in
parallel. Leadership is needed to spur
innovation in the way we do things and
applaud constructive changes, as shown
by Southeastern.
The creation of homogenous industry
entities like RDG and RSG are therefore
good news for the UK rail industry
and both have identified skills as one
of their principal work streams. These
two organisations represent all the TRS
communities in the UK that keep the
current fleets running and will deliver
and support the future fleets to come –
RDG for operator/maintainers and RSG
for the supply chain TRS maintainers/
OEMs.
So, acceptance of the true training task
to be delivered, consolidated leadership
within the sector and a willingness to
look at new ways of working that focus
on performance, there is every reason
that we will be celebrating the successful
introduction and maintenance of over
3,000 more vehicles to the UK fleet by the
end of CP5.
Justin Southcombe is commercial director at
Perpetuum
Tel: 023 8076 5888
Email: info@perpetuum.com
Visit www.perpetuum.com/rail
Allan Macdonald is project manager for rail at EAL
Tel: 01923 652400
Email: rail@eal.org.uk
Visit www.eal.org.uk