Scott Johnson

Said the following about Northern Rail Engineering Training Team:

“The last 12 months have been a time of huge challenges, change, innovation and endeavour for the Northern Rail Engineering Training team.

Under normal circumstances the 11 members of the trainer/assessor team are incredibly busy being responsible for the delivery of safety (Depot Safety/PTS), technical (rolling stock systems) and safety critical competence of over 1000 engineering employees.

But after receiving feedback from the 2014 employee survey, several external audits and a review of engineering performance, it was recognised that there was a real need to develop a new approach to training and competence to address both cultural and performance issues.

From a company perspective we needed to implement innovative solutions to improve engagement and performance and from an individual perspective we identified the need to ensure that every engineering employee received the opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and competence, through relevant, quality multi-platform training, new technology and effective methods of training delivery.

This huge challenge was massively compounded by Northern rails involvement with the electrification of the Northern hub. This project has generated the recruitment of over 60 maintenance technicians into the business , all requiring at least 10 weeks of induction training, as well as the introduction of a new class of electric rolling stock to the organisation, the Class 319 fleet, which required a 3 months turnaround for the development and delivery of technical training, in order to meet the December2014 timetable.

Not only did the team successfully deliver this massive amount of additional training as well as sustaining the training and competence demands of a very bust engineering department, they have also managed to develop a number of innovative and cost effective solutions to improve both the organisational and individual training requirements.

The team named the training project the BIG 5; as they identified 5 main areas for improvement that culminated in;

A complete review of apprentice training and development to ensure that they have the skills and experience to support the future of the rail industry, as well as contributing to the development of the Rail industry Trailblazer Apprenticeship program in conjunction with many industry partners and facilitated by NSARE.

The introduction and long term planning of improved technical training with an emphasis on practical training and multi-skilling (including the creation of a practical training workshop at Newton Heath, and plans to create further workshops at other locations).

The development an delivery of an innovative technical training program, entitled Flexi-skills, to address the training needs of both established and new maintenance technicians across numerous types of rolling stock and engineering disciplines, to ensure the highest levels of rolling stock performance

The introduction of E-Learning centres supported by innovative software packages, at each of our 4 main depots, to deliver online renewable training and competence (which will see a huge reduction in man-hours lost to compliance training allowing a refocus of training resource towards personal development and technical training).

A complete review of the engineering competence management system with a focus on continuous personal development and multi-skilling, whilst maintaining safety critical compliance. The revised CMS system is currently in the process of being accredited by EAL and as an NVQ centre the Northern team will soon be delivering NVQ L2/L3 in traction and rolling stock in-house.

The team have worked remarkably hard over the last 12 months and I would have been incredibly proud of them after delivering the additional training requirements created by the northern Hub, but to develop and implement a cultural shift in how we approach and deliver training within engineering at Northern I think that deserves major recognition.

Scott Johnson

Engineering Training and Competence Manager“