The year 2019 ended with the organisation of the 5th edition of the UIC World Congress on Rail Training (WCRT) in Rabat. The WCRT was successfully organised for the first time outside Europe, with the participation of 250 participants from 30 countries.
WCRT 2019 was the occasion for new challenges:
(1) To launch a new partnership option. WCRT2019 supported talent attraction and retention. Involving young railway professionals, providing them with an opportunity to gain access to international exposure and offering a networking platform for young railway talent. During the congress a specific programme was organised for the young talents in order to get information and feedback about their expectations as well as to enhance their cross-cultural skills.
This was supported by FS, ONCF, EMI, SNCF, DB and RZD. The young talents presented the results of their exchanges and brainstorming at the end of the congress and will continue working together until the next WCRT in 2021.
(2) To launch a permanent Observatory on future of work and training. The idea results from the first-year project dedicated to “the future of work & training”. The main scope of the research was to describe future railway work scenarios, forecast the impact on jobs and match the best L&D Technologies. The methodology was mainly by interviews to line and HR managers and by collecting comparable data. The project group agreed to focus the analysis on four selected areas of railway activity (traffic control, infrastructure maintenance, driving, train management) looking at the future technological trends on these activities and their impact on jobs/tasks and training now, in five years, and in 10 years’ time.
The group is currently investigating the different possibilities for setting up the observatory.
(3) The kick off for TrainRail – the new board for rail universities and training centres (Chair: President of Russian University of Transport)
TrainRail is a worldwide effort to offer all railway stakeholders a “one-stop-shop” for education, training and learning resources, as well as pool expertise and resources of rail academia, corporate training centres and rail associations at global level.
The main objectives of TrainRail include reducing the gap between education offers and employer’s needs as well as to support and boost, at the international level, initiatives towards youth to raise the attractiveness of rail jobs and professions.
The workshop resulted in the following priority actions:
- Setting up an expert group to start development of quality criteria for training courses – potentially evolving into UIC IRS
- Support the UIC Talent project with attractiveness measures, which would target schools as well as universities and young professionals.
- Regarding schools, UIC Railway Talent is already an official partner of the Russian initiative (Russian University of Transport in partnership inter alia with RZD…) of the “Transport of the Future” youth contest which targets children between 12 to 19 years. The aim is to make the contest more international. Regarding universities and young professionals, the proposal is to develop “TrainRail Hackaton”, at regional and or international level.
- Enhancement of regional activities, with the appointment of two vice chairs for Train Rail SWJTU (South West Jiatong Transport University) in Chengdu, China and IFF (Institut de Formation Ferroviaire) in Rabat, Morocco. In Asia Pacific, the idea is to develop new ideas, as well as attract new stakeholders.
- In Africa, the idea is to start the African Network of Rail Training Centres.
In addition to all the above-mentioned actions, efforts in mapping education and training centres and offers worldwide will be continued. You are also most welcome to register your training/educational organisation at the following link (you need to log in before registering your organisation): https://www.railtalent.org/edu
Our partners from Morocco have prepared a video with the “best of” WCRT2019. To view it, click on: https://youtu.be/fzmSwApN9Uc
Staff development – online training:
The Talent project is exploring the potential of online learning (exploring different training tools and methodologies: online learning, group and team learning, communities of practice/SIG, informal learning & recognition,, assessment, self-assessment, peer assessment; case studies, simulation, open badges) as a means to attract and develop talents in the rail sector.
Two new modules were put online in 2019:
- A simeo tool to explore Rail Asset Management (RAM) simulations
- ERTMS module two for drivers
To view the courses click on: https://railtalent.org/participate/learning/
The module “Infrastructure manager" is in progress and should be released in 2020. For a sneak preview, click on:
Provided additional funding is available, some other modules are planned to be developed for dispatcher and rolling stock owners. The group is looking for additional expertise for these fields, in particular regarding the content for the Rolling Stock Owner module. You are therefore very much welcome to contact the team at https://ertms.railtalent.org/about/
The first meeting of TEDP in 2020 will be held on 23 and 24 April in Valencia at the kind invitation of ADIF. Besides the review of TEDP activities, it will be mainly dedicated to new technologies and immersive learning environments.
