We were delighted to be guests on the Training Ahead Australia stand at AusRAIL PLUS this year. It was a busy event, with record attendance and a real enthusiasm for what needs to come next for the industry. We spoke with a wide range of operators and infrastructure maintainers, all of whom agreed that items high on the agenda include ETCS roll out and the means of developing an interoperable workforce, capable of meeting increasing demand.

As identified by the Australian Rail Association in their report (ARA-Skills-Report_Final.pdf) the industry faces an imminent skills shortage, as older drivers and trainers retire and at a time when the demand for more passenger and freight capacity has never been higher. The National Rail Action Plan is moving the industry towards coordination across digital signalling and workforce development. However, there is the threat that disconnects between planning, implementation and commercial pressures may result in progress being uneven across states or operators.

Rail is an economic enabler so every effort, at every level, must be made to ensure uniform improvements across infrastructure, digital signalling and workforce development. Integral to that is the need for a collaborative training strategy that is built from the track up, delivering what is needed now to drive commercial growth, and what will be required to meet future demand.

To accelerate the training of the next generation, across all areas of the industry,  we need to capture the knowledge of our aging workforce and build a means of distributing this uniformly across states and operators.  Simulation technologies offer this opportunity, as we have seen with SIMULAPro© rule book simulator in Italy (Bringing the Italian Rail Rule Book to life – Denova), however it is closing and needs some real industry drivers.