NSARE
Forecasting the need for jobs and skills
across the rail industry One of the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering’s (NSARE’s) major projects over the past year has been producing a skills forecasting model for the entire industry. RTM discusses its findings with NSARE chief executive Gil Howarth.
In
March 2012, the ORR commissioned NSARE to produce a skills forecast for the
industry and RTM spoke to NSARE’s Elaine Clarke in our April/May 2012 edition about the work being done for the project, which updates and expands work done in 2009 and 2010 before NSARE was formally established as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.
The findings of the skills forecasting report have been revealed to leading figures within the industry in recent months, and in January 2013, NSARE published the outputs from its work.
The figures, which apply to Network Rail, Transport for London, Crossrail, HS2, the light rail sector, the train and freight operating companies and all their railway engineering supply chains, were ‘common sense checked’ with stakeholders throughout the industry and have been agreed, with some of the key messages on the number of people required across different rail sub-sectors published in the graphs below.
A flexible model As part of the project, NSARE now has an
aggregated programme of more than 200 rail projects, of which 140 have yet to start implementation.
NSARE said: “The model has been developed and is working; skills forecasts can be generated against a range of scenarios by adjusting the input assumptions.
“The response has been very favourable; there is general agreement that the work provides a firm basis for updating the Skills Strategy that NSARE published in February 2012.”
NSARE’s chief executive Gil Howarth told RTM more about the model, which he said he would describe as “flexible”.
Although it’s capable of making complex calculations, the model itself can be easily updated by making simple changes to the assumptions on which it’s based.
Howarth said: “For instance, we can simply put in the retirement age, and the model recalculates the numbers, because we don’t know if the average retirement age is going to be 60, 65 or somewhere in between.
“There are some incentives for ex- British Rail peo- ple to retire early, whereas some peo- ple with mortgages and grandchildren during the recession may very well de- cide to stay on until after 65.
“There are a num- ber of assumptions around the project investment pro- gramme we can change: the dura- tion, the start date, the value – and the model will compen- sate for that.”
Sensitivity of different sectors to improved efficiency can be included, and even though the
26 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 13 Crossrail 2
On page 54 RTM discusses the latest push on Crossrail 2, the Chelsea-Hackney line.
At £12bn, this would be another major infrastructure project with large workforce requirements.
Howarth said: “We absolutely welcome it. It’s a piece of infrastructure that has been known to be needed for some time.
“Yes, of course there’ll be additional resources required and skills.
“But I think that with the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy in place, and the skills forecasting work which provides a very good foundation for predicting what rail engineers will need for the future, then if Chelsea-Hackney, Crossrail 2, does start to gain support and becomes a project, rather than a proposal, then we can feed that into our model.
“We’ve got the initial phases of HS2 in our model, so it will be another project which would feed in.”
model can’t predict new technologies that may alter the jobs and skills mix required by the industry, it’s flexible enough to be adjusted as time goes on.
ORR’s director of rail safety, Ian Prosser, said: “The regulator welcomes publication of the Skills Forecasting report, commissioned from the NSARE to provide ORR with a long-term overview of rail industry skills, competence and resources.
“While the report highlights some areas of concern, notably a growing difficulty in sourcing well-qualified and experienced staff, it also recognises the steps already being taken by the industry to ensure adequate training and support is in place to help today’s apprentices develop into tomorrow’s experts.
“The report findings will inform ORR’s proactive safety inspection regime and our assessment of what Network Rail must achieve during the five years from 2014 to 2019, the funding needed, and the incentives required to encourage delivery and outperformance.”
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