Freight Rail, Passenger Rail, Workforce, Certification & Training

Rail forum calls for injection of youth in time of ‘unprecedented expansion’

A recent forum held by the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) sought to highlight the importance of young professionals in the rail industry.

The Young Rail Professionals Forum featured a panel that brought together government and industry figures to discuss the future of the rail workforce.

The discussion, facilitated by Camille McGregor, director of client strategy at Aurecon, included panellists Tim Reardon, Secretary of Transport for NSW, Nicole Waterman, technical director at Laing O’Rourke, Anna Squire, NSW and ACT infrastructure leader at Arup, and Matthew Aberline, senior project manager and chartered civil engineer at Aurecon.

Chief executive of the ARA, Danny Broad, saw the forum as an opportunity to discuss both the opportunities and the barriers in “harnessing the workforce of the future”. He especially emphasised the importance of employing the skills of younger workers in a period of “unprecedented investment and expansion” in an industry with an aging workforce.

“The forum has identified some important issues, including the value of age and gender diversity in the workforce, what the job and organisational aspects are that attract and retain young professionals, what the value is of new skills versus experience and the importance of future technologies and disruptive thinking,” Broad said.

He went on to state that these issues needed to be addressed in the rail industry before it is beset by a “skills shortage” in the near future, where “demand outweighs supply”.

Broad concluded by highlighting the importance of having a workforce representative of consumers: “We know all too well that young people are users of our trains. As an industry we need to appeal to the people we transport and today’s forum is a step in the right direction of discussing the change that needs to come”.