The RailStaff Awards 2024

Fast Trackers

Network Rail and Mott MacDonald

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Nominations for Rail Team of the Year

Rowan Blaney

Said the following about Fast Trackers:

“The Fast Trackers programme has made huge steps this year following its extremely successful pilot last year, upscaling from around 150 students from the North-West to over 400 across the country!

Fast Trackers is an outreach programme designed to inspire 16-19 year old students from areas with low uptake of higher education to pursue a career in engineering. It aims to promote social mobility, diversity and inclusion, future skills readiness and professional skills development.

Launched in 2018, the accredited programme was delivered by graduates as part of Network Rail’s Year of Engineering, in partnership with Mott MacDonald. The complexity of the project all rests on the core team of Network Rail and Mott MacDonald, a partnership which has grown over both iterations of the programme. The scheme sees critical collaboration between the client body, a major consultancy, the national collaborative outreach programme (NCOP) and other industry organisations such as the Young Rail Professionals. With a combination of funding, volunteered time and provision of resource, the industry has come together to deliver something which is bespoke, valuable and genuinely making a difference.

In its first year, Fast Trackers had a huge impact on the students who took part. College attendance improved from 55% to 95% for some of the participants, and many have reported that they are now studying engineering as a direct consequence of the scheme. The companies involved have also supported repeat work experience for participating students, and a selection of individual prize winners were offered the chance to go up in Network Rail’s state of the art helicopter. These fantastic outputs have prompted unprecedented support from the rail industry and beyond!

This year over 400 young people from across England and Scotland have taken part in a three-day regional scheme comprising of a higher education visit, an employer visit, a station tour and an engineering challenge. The engineering challenge consists of redesigning London Euston station and coming up with a new high speed rail link solution to Birmingham.

Participants will receive an Industrial Cadets Silver Award with around 70 of the highest performers progressing to the next stage; a national final, three-day residential in Birmingham on 2-4 July for which finalists will gain their Industrial Cadets Gold Award.

New to Fast Trackers 2019 is the inclusion of interview and assessment centre experience for those at the national finals, giving students whose colleges may not typically be able to provide similar opportunities a chance to hone their professional skills and improve their chances of employment / higher education enrolment. Stand-out individuals may even be offered work experience or paid years in industry with Network Rail, Mott MacDonald and other supporting organisations – a direct consequence of last year’s success and publicity.

To ensure the longevity of the programme, a structure has been formed with a cross-organisational national steering group feeding into the regional teams, made up of Network Rail and Mott MacDonald staff - this partnership is the key to its success. A relationship has also been established with the Young Rail Professionals, who have provided funding to supplement the cost of the event to the NCOP consortia. Support has also been given by a range of other industry and educational bodies, including but not limited to: the National College of High Speed Rail, University of Birmingham, Alstom, HS1, HS2, Crossrail, National Grid and the EDT.

Core to the programme is the numerous volunteers required to deliver the various elements. For each of the engineering challenge days at both regional and national finals, there will be one volunteer for every five students – this would not be possible without the ongoing support of both Network Rail and Mott MacDonald from an executive level.

Keen to not rest on our laurels, the steering group is already looking at plans for Fast Trackers 2020 and how it can be improved further. A major step, once delivery of Fast Trackers 2019 is complete, will be a review of the lessons learned – an example would be challenges arising from exam periods for the students taking part, which can be overcome by shifting the entire programme to align with the academic year up to Easter. An exciting prospect is the programme working with academic awarding bodies to accredit Fast Trackers for inclusion within vocational qualification frameworks i.e. making it possible for Fast Trackers to form part of the student’s curriculum.

Fast Trackers 2019 not only aims to promote the construction and railway industries, but looks to the future, incorporating Industry 4.0 and sustainability as core themes of the national finals. This will include workshops, speakers and challenges which encourage the use of digital technologies and the upskilling of our future workforce.

In conclusion, Fast Trackers is now seen as the main outreach event for the rail industry, it is supported by a plethora of industry leaders, it has seen incredible, tangible outputs, and it only looks like it’s going to keep on growing. Students have exhibited improved confidence and self-esteem, appreciating their own value and the impact they can have on society as a whole in the future – this empowers them to make the right educational and career choices for themselves. Fast Trackers portrays engineering as fun, interesting and creative and showcases engineering roles as aspirational career goals. Through collaboration, discretionary effort and the support of a cross section of the industry, the Fast Trackers programme is driving social mobility and upskilling of our country’s youth across the country. All this could only be achieved through drawing on the strength of the partnership and teamwork between Mott MacDonald and Network Rail within the Fast Trackers team.“