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Finding and growing the skills rail needs for safer, more efficient, national rail system.
Rail Skills Forum: towards mutual recognition
More than 60 leaders from across the rail and skills sectors came together at our Rail Skills Forum in August to tackle one of rail’s long-standing challenges: getting mutual recognition of skills and competencies.
Today, many Australia, rail workers must retrain in skills they already have to qualify to work on another network. This is an unnecessary burden on workers and pushes up costs and inefficiencies across the industry.
The NTC and Industry Skills Australia have been working with industry to change this by developing a five-step blueprint for mutual recognition and national guidance for the design, delivery and assessment of entry-level rail skills. The Rail Skills Forum built on this work, exploring the governance and national standards needed to establish a national system and to help identify who should hold, maintain, audit and oversee it.
Roundtable discussions showed strong support for strengthening the roles of existing bodies, including the Australian Rail Industry Standards Organisation (ARISO) and the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator. Participants also discussed whether a national scheme could be rolled out in stages with the introduction of the European Train Control System (ETCS) offering a timely opportunity to establish nationally recognised training and competencies from the outset.
Presenters detailed how a national approach has worked in other sectors and in microcosms of rail including the Australasian Railway Association’s (ARA) Safely Access the Rail Corridor competency training, Engineers Australia’s national registration framework and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s (AMSA) national training framework, fully adopted by the maritime industry in 2018. As Michelle Grech, AMSA Branch Manager, Seafarer Safety, Crewing and Competency, put it:
“We don’t refer to it as mutual recognition anymore. It’s a national system - one national, consistent system that is recognised across Australia.”
That’s the ambition for rail: one national system that recognises skills, supports workforce mobility and helps make Australia’s rail industry more productive.
Thank you to Michelle and our other speakers and panellists.
You can find out more about our work meeting future rail skills demand here.
Preparing the workforce for digital signalling
The ARA’s People and Culture Conference gave the NTC an opportunity to broaden the conversation about the changes ahead for Australia's rail workforce, particularly what digital signalling technologies will mean for workers as ETCS rolls out.
Europe, where ETCS has operated for more than a decade, offers a key lesson: successful implementation requires operational and organisational transformation alongside the technology itself, NTC Executive Director Rail Systems & Operations Reform Stephen Lemon told the conference. That means lifting workers’ digital skills while building greater consistency in technology, ways of working, training and competencies across networks.
The NTC is working with industry, governments and the relevant Jobs and Skills Councils on this alignment, including developing a national training package for rail electrical qualifications at Certificate IV level and above that incorporates ETCS.
But technology and training are only part of the transition. As new systems and ways of working are introduced, rail enterprises need to listen to their workers and understand their experience: what's working, what isn't, and what support is needed, NTC Chair Carolyn Walsh said.
A more connected, digitised network will also require changes to governance, with stronger roles for ARISO and ONRSR. "Right now, we're relying on goodwill between networks to ensure consistency as we roll out ETCS," Carolyn said. "There's a strong call from industry to move more towards mandatory arrangements, which implies legislative change. This will give industry the certainty they're seeking."
Whether it's the technologies that connect networks or the skills that keep them running, getting alignment across networks is a key element of the National Rail Action Plan, helping Australia maximise the productivity and safety benefits of a more digital railway.
You can find out more here
Learning from Europe: building in interoperability
International experience shows that to get the full benefits of ETCS we need to make interoperability a priority from the outset and commit to avoiding unnecessary complexity and bespoke variations.
More than two decades after ETCS was introduced, Europe is still working towards the vision that inspired it: a seamless, interoperable railway network capable of moving trains across national borders without changing signalling systems.
While the technology has delivered significant benefits, progress has been slower, more expensive and more complex than many anticipated.
For Australia, Europe’s experience provides valuable lessons. As ETCS is rolled out across the national rail network, there is an opportunity to capture the benefits of a proven technology while avoiding many of the pitfalls seen elsewhere.
By adopting proven standards, getting industry-wide alignment and configuring systems to local requirements rather than customising them, Australia can reduce risk, improve safety and performance, and avoid creating a digital equivalent to the historic mistake of having multiple rail gauges across Australia..
A detailed report on how Europe’s experience is shaping Australia’s ETCS rollout can be found here.