TRAINING AND SKILLS
The next generation N
One particularly well-received part of NSARE’s Training Matters conference involved three of Network Rail’s year 3 track apprentices, who came to Derby to speak after having been impressed with NSARE at the launch at Farringdon station in July of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning. Adam Hewitt reports.
etwork Rail invests a signifi cant amount of time in the apprentices on its Advanced
Apprenticeship Scheme – and a signifi cant amount of money too, about £75,000 each over three years.
Pete Donovan, the apprentice programme manager for year 1, told NSARE’s Training Matters conference: “We’re hugely proud of what we deliver on the Advanced Apprenticeship Scheme, and quite unashamedly so. We want to develop both their technical competence on the railway, and behaviours: leadership skills, character and communication skills.”
Much of the academic training is delivered at HMS Sultan in Gosport, a Royal Navy facility, in partnership with Babcock, and the year 1 apprentices live on board HMS Collingwood a few miles away. In their second and third years, they spend most of the time doing practical work at a depot or other Network Rail facility relevant to their specialism.
Adrian Ferguson, 23, from west London, said: “Living on a Navy establishment, at fi rst was a bit of a shock! We weren’t allowed to walk on the grass, or use mobile phones. The fi rst year living there was all about respect, and following the Navy’s rules and regulations.”
He told RTM that after doing electrical engineering at college, he heard about the Network Rail scheme from his lecturers and
managed to get accepted.
Bilal Jamil, 20, enjoyed doing a GCSE in engineering, and later realised the A-levels he chose weren’t for him and came back to the idea of engineering. He was thrilled when he was accepted on the advanced apprentice scheme and told RTM: “Here, I’m working: learning and earning and getting all this experience. But if I went to uni, getting work experience would be much harder. I’m working now on what I need to be doing. I’m hopeful of a career in this industry. I’ve always been looking ahead to where I want to be.”
After completing his fi rst year, he went to work with the maintenance team at the Finsbury Park depot. “The skills you’ve gained in your fi rst year, it’s all about implementing those in the second year,” he said, with an emphasis on safety culture, high-quality work, and work- based learning objectives.
The Network Rail advanced apprentices also gain qualifi cations from the Institute of Leadership and Management, and have a real edge when applying for jobs within the organisation. Anyone not immediately
i National Traction & Rolling Stock Academy
The conference also heard more about the Traction & Rolling Stock Academy to be built at Northampton King’s Heath.
Graeme Clarke from Siemens spoke about the academy, saying: “We’ve got a lot of trains in service and a lot of trains about to come into service. And that’s given us a major problem. It’s an industry-wide problem. And the problem is that we are chronically short of people.
“The industry in all its aspects is moving away
“Siemens’ training requirements are about 3,000 man-days a year, and in the foresee- able future are going to rise to about 4,500 man-days.
“Our project started out as a way of meeting Siemens’ training needs for the future, but obviously when we got involved with NSARE we realised that the project was far more and far greater than that.
“We want to provide world-class training for the entire railway industry, because it’s in Siemens’ interest that the whole railway
More stories like this at:
www.railtechnologymagazine.com/ rail-jobs-staff-issues-and-training
from the hammer, and moving very much towards the laptop, and the quality of the people we need is ever-increasing.
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industry – our suppliers, our customers, even our competitors – are healthy, and growing, and fl ourishing.”
He said the academy will include a virtual reality suite, and both clean and dirty training rooms for academic and practical work.
He added: “The training room will be full of functioning training equipment: we’re going to have bogies, door rigs, inverters, and they’re all going to be sequenced with each other, so you can put faults on them; one piece will affect another; you can do fault fi nding; you can do equipment changing – all kinds of things.”
Construction is due to start in February 2013, with an expected opening date of April 2014.
rail technology magazine Oct/Nov 12 | 29
successful would be kept on an apprentice wage, and there are plenty of opportunities for further educational and technical development, Donovan said, which Network Rail is keen to sponsor.
The apprentices said their friends, many doing traditional university courses, were a touch envious – since the apprentices now have a clear idea of where their careers are going, and are not saddled with debt. Jamil said: “They think I made a good decision!”
Network Rail is taking applications from early 2013 for the September 2013 intake of its Advanced Apprenticeship Scheme.
© Siemens AG
© Ian Vernon
www.ianvernonphotography.co.uk
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