Network Rail working to plug skills gaps

Rail operator Network Rail (NR) is having to re-skill the 15,000 employees it took in-house from maintenance contractors last year after finding that they had a “varying level of competency”.

NR chief executive John Armitt told CJ that after taking its maintenance operations away from contractors, the rail operator has been investing in new signaling training centres in Watford and Leeds and the £20m purchase of a new leadership centre in Coventry.

Asked whether the problem was down to contractors not providing the right level of
skills for staff when they were running the contracts, Armitt replied: “There were
varying level of competencies across the maintenance staff we inherited.

“This could be down to many factors: the geography of the contracts and some training providers used not being quite up to scratch and not providing the right environment to train staff. We no longer work with these and now carefully select who we use.”

NR is currently looking for another 200 to 300 staff to boost its maintenance teams over the next two years after the discovery of skills gaps across the inherited contracts.

In its preliminary results for the year to 31 March 2005, released last week, NR has made £120m like-for-like savings on its maintenance operations since taking them over a year ago.