The Infrastructure Podcast: Episode 16

Guest: Neil Robertson, chief executive, National Skills Academy for Rail

Training the workforce for a modern railway

In this latest podcast we talk about the challenge of building and training the skilled workforce fit for a modern railway.

In the five years to March 2024, some £50.6bn will have been invested to run, maintain and enhance the UK national rail network. The current expectation is that some £44bn will be committed for the next CP7 period to March 2029, made up from £27.5bn from government funding and the rest from commercial income. 

These are, in anyone’s book, vast sums of money. And if you add into this the commitment to funding other rail projects such as HS2, East West Rail, Northern Powerhouse Rail and Transport for London’s on-going expenditure, it clear that the UK’s rail infrastructure takes a lot of looking after.

That requires a skilled and experienced workforce, not only to keep the system running effectively, efficiently and safely, but also to continually embrace new ways to managing the assets so as to do more with the available funding – and do it more safely.

And it will require new technologies, new techniques and much learning from other industries. 

To do this means training a new generation of rail worker and upskilling the existing cohort. It means attracting and training a raft of new apprentices and graduate trainees to lead the industry towards a new digitally enhanced, customer focused railway industry, capable of placing the UK rail network at the heart of an integrated modern transport system.

To discuss how this will happen it is my pleasure therefore to welcome Neil Robertson, chief executive, National Skills Academy for Rail to the Infrastructure Podcast, unquestionably the man with the passion and experience to meet this challenge.

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