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Skills shortage could affect £25 billion rail improvement works
January 21st, 2013 by adminAn engineering skills shortage could put the brakes on £25 billion worth of rail investment plans, railnews.co.uk reports.
Over 200 major rail projects have already been outlined to take place over the next seven years, with an estimated value of around £25 billion. Many of these investments may not end up seeing the light of day, however, as the rail industry faces a shortage of qualified and experienced staff members.
As it stands, the electrification of main lines – such as those schemes outlined by Thameslink, Crossrail, London Overground and the Intercity Express Programme – may be the worst affected, with investors finding it difficult to fill electrical engineer jobs and other posts with people that are sufficiently experienced.
Moreover, the workforce that are equipped with the relevant skills and experience are an aged one, with fears that such skills are not being replicated in the newer generation of engineers.
The warnings have come from a report produced by the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering. It gathered information by questioning over 100 companies with rail engineering staff, of which 51 provided a “rich data sample in excess of 44,000 people”.
As it stands, there is a workforce of 100,000 people in existing rail engineering jobs, of which 84,500 work in railway engineering-specific roles, gaelcommunity.com claims. Within this group, 70 per cent work in track-based posts. Just 4.4 per cent, meanwhile, are female.
The report went on: “Overall, the age profiles of the infrastructure workforce follow a roughly normal distribution with the exception of the T&RS profile which has a particularly ageing workforce – with some 20 per cent of people over the age of 55.”
Author: David Howells
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An engineering skills shortage could put the brakes on £25 billion worth of rail investment plans, railnews.co.uk reports. (more…)
