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As digitalisation gains momentum across Australia’s rail networks, one obstacle looms over every major project: the lack of a nationally recognised system of skills and competency accreditation that allows workers to move easily between jobs on different networks.
Without this, states will struggle to train the large number of signalling and digital systems specialists needed for their most significant technology upgrades in decades.
In Queensland, the pressure is already mounting. As the state prepares for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, crews are rolling out European Train Control System/ETCS across the South East Queensland network – an upgrade essential for running more trains through the busy corridor.
“Getting access to systems engineers, signalling designers, signalling testers is challenging especially as other jurisdictions start to roll out ETCS,” said Nathan Angus, General Manager (Passenger Rollingstock and Signalling) at the Department of Transport and Main Roads in Queensland.
“Having ETCS in place will mean we can safely run more trains over existing infrastructure, which will help to meet the Olympic demand.
“However, post the opening of the Cross River Rail tunnel, getting ETCS delivered across the entire Sector One network (between the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast) will present more of a challenge.”
Queensland is not alone. Five years ago, Victoria hit a similar wall during its Big Build program. To keep the Metro Tunnel and associated projects on track, it rapidly upskilled dozens of engineers in digital signalling.
With that workload now easing, Victoria’s highly trained workforce could, in theory, help accelerate Queensland’s rollout. In practice, moving between states is rarely straightforward.
A workforce held back by fragmented training
Portability of skills remains one of the rail industry’s biggest barriers, with workers – even experienced engineers and technicians – often needing to re-train and be re-assessed in basic competencies when crossing borders or even moving between operators within the same state.
Under Rail Safety National Law, rail safety workers must be assessed as competent to carry out their work. This was aligned to the Australian Qualifications Framework, with the intention of supporting skills recognition and portability across Australia. However, operators have extensively customised their training programs, creating a patchwork of local courses, curricula and competencies.
“These are so embedded into the specifics of an employer group that you can’t take that (qualification) somewhere else,” Fiona Love, Head of Workforce Development at the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) told the National Transport Commission’s (NTC) Future Rail Skills Forum. “Rail is the biggest user of skillsets in the country. We need to build generic curriculum.”
This fragmentation is becoming critical. Analysis through the National Rail Action Plan (NRAP) shows that over the next decade, Australia will need an estimated 70,000 additional workers to build, operate, and maintain expanding rail networks, including more than 13,000 roles specific to digital systems.
“Building meaningful capability and capacity requires governments and industry to work together,” said NTC Chief Executive Officer Michael Hopkins. “We have a very fragmented training and competency management framework in Australia, and that needs to change.”
Love agreed, noting that national training can be supplemented with training relevant to a specific corridor or employer.
“As a doctor doing a medical degree, you’re not just trained for one hospital – you learn that after you graduate,” she said. “Rail needs to operate in this way.”
The NTC is partnering with governments and industry to ensure the skills required to design, build, operate and maintain Australia’s new ETCS technologies are nationally recognised.
What portability can look like
The ARA has been working with industry to build a national “Safely Access the Rail Corridor” course that is relevant at a generic level to every rail corridor. When people are required to work in a specific rail corridor, the onus is then on the rail infrastructure manager and/or operator to have a local induction that is relevant to their specific risks.
Another example of getting mutual recognition of competencies is in Victoria, where the state’s Signalling Strategy Taskforce (SST) set out to ensure it had the skills needed to deliver its major rail builds. The taskforce streamlined how engineers move between Metro Trains Melbourne and V/Line by creating training and competency standards recognised across both networks. It also developed new courseware aligned with the ARA’s National Signalling Assessment Framework, and the United Kingdom’s Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE) licensing credentials.
Together, these reforms will help to enable clearer pathways for signalling specialists from interstate and overseas, strengthening the talent pipeline.
“Portability improves opportunities for people to build their skills and careers,” said David Ness, Executive Director of Network Signalling Services – Rail at the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority.
“If we don’t help people do this, we lose them from the sector. Retention of skills, especially those that take a long time to develop, should be of paramount importance.”
SST has discussed expanding these reforms nationally, but uptake from other jurisdictions has been cautious. Operators want rock-solid confidence that training delivered outside their own registered training organisation meets the required standards.
“It’s all about the chain of evidence,” said Jane Copperthwaite, Chair of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE), Australasian Section.
“Networks want to know the assessment criteria and how they can get certainty in the outcome. The question is, how do you transition from where you are today to where you need to be?”
Angus agreed: “Currently it goes back to the respective rail infrastructure managers’ accreditation and their assessment of supporting evidence that allows that mobility.
“Getting this process right is going to be important.”
A rare chance to get it right from day one
While the sector works through these broader questions, the NTC is partnering with governments and industry to ensure the skills required to design, build, operate and maintain Australia’s new ETCS technologies are nationally recognised from day one.
Infrastructure and transport ministers have asked the NTC to develop a single ETCS training curriculum for the country to prevent the fragmentation that has plagued other areas of rail training.
With ETCS standards now mandated on the major interstate freight and passenger networks – and with New South Wales and Queensland well into their deployment – establishing mutually recognised entry-level competencies has become an urgent priority.
“We’re seeing the adoption of ETCS as an opportunity to get curriculum for the digital technologies in place early, before people can invent their own,” said NTC Chair Carolyn Walsh.
“Achieving nationally recognised competencies in existing areas is often challenging because you have to unwind long-standing arrangements. ETCS offers a rare greenfield opportunity to be consistent from the start.”
As the first mover in rolling out ETCS Level 2 on the National Network for Interoperability, Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) has proposed leveraging its European Union-modelled, foundational ETCS curriculum nationally, offering a roadmap. This was supported by eastern seaboard jurisdictions and the Australian Rail Track Corporation in September.
Further work is being undertaken by the NTC to determine how the product can be ensured fit for purpose for different networks, and to work through governance arrangements such as resourcing and who will lead the development, ownership and maintenance of the product, as well as implementation and uptake.
“Developing a national ETCS curriculum now and rolling it out across the entire country helps us to develop the level of expertise that we can rely on,” said Mary Hetherington, TfNSW Director of Competency and Learning.
“A person who builds up that expertise should be able to apply it to other railways so we can move with the peaks and troughs of where different jurisdictions are at with their design and development life cycle.
“That transferability will help us address some of the labour shortages that we have within the rail industry.”
A turning point for industry
For workers who operate across multiple networks, national competencies cannot come soon enough.
“We have over 150 competencies to keep an eye on day to day. Some staff have five or six they have to maintain,” said Richard Mifsud, Executive General Manager, Engineering (Australia and New Zealand) at railway design and construction company JDMR. “With so many operators and systems that are all slightly different, it’s a real minefield.”
While the ARA’s national signalling assessment framework is an important starting point, Mifsud said organisations will need stronger assurance that national standards align with local requirements.
“It’s a matter of setting the system up in a way that gives them confidence that they’ve covered themselves and their organisation. This can be done, but it’s going to need leadership.”
Australia’s rail sector stands at a pivotal moment. Billions of dollars are being invested in digital signalling, major expansions, and new rolling stock. The technology is ready, but what is missing is a coordinated approach to deployment and a truly mobile, national workforce capable of delivering it.
“Harmonising and standardising a national competency framework is not just a simple administrative reform,” Hopkins said.
“It requires a deeper shift in perspective and really needs all states and rail infrastructure managers to think nationally, align on the same framework, and find pathways to get to that desired state of mutual recognition.”
To find out more about how the NTC is working with governments and industry to develop a rail workforce for the future, visit the National Rail Action Plan website.