Rail Troopers
01 Dec 2004
Respected head of the Railway Forum, Adrian Lyons, was a career army officer before joining the railway industry.
It’s a path increasingly followed by ex-service men and women. Dermot McGinley, chairman of McGinley Recruitment Services, spotted this largely untapped pool of educated, skilled and experienced individuals, right here in the UK.
Says Mr. McGinley, ‘The armed forces have hundreds of skilled and experienced engineers leaving service every year - and they all want and need a new career. When I looked more closely, I discovered there was a considerable overlap in skills, particularly in signalling, but the language of the two sectors is so different it was no surprise that the rail industry wasn’t full of ex-forces personnel. In effect, I needed to do a translation job to enable the two sides to communicate with each other.’
With the help of signalling managers, a skills matrix was created to match Army rank or range of experience against an established Rail S&T grade. A range of profiling documents was then created to ensure the formal qualifications and practical experience gained in the forces translated into the right grades in the rail industry and met agreed requirements.
The breakthrough meant that for the first time, rail engineers and forces leavers could understand the level of knowledge in each others discipline. To help bridge the divide, a training course in basic rail signalling was also introduced and run in conjunction with the forces Careers Transition Partnership.
This meant that as part of their retraining service, leavers could attend the course and potential employees were better able to see the transferable skills of service leavers.
Encourage
‘The basic signalling course provides a grounding in understanding how things are applied to the rail industry and the fundamentals to rail signalling. What we want to be able to do is encourage service leavers to join the rail industry because the industry desperately needs skilled professionals,’ continued Dermot.
‘We also want employees to be able to see the massive amounts of experience and transferable skills these guys can bring to the industry. It is still early days, but I am hopeful that the rail industry sees the potential and helps us to deliver it for them.’
Salim Ahmed, Business Operation Planning Manager at Tubelines, hired two services leavers as Resource Managers in May and is pleased with his decision. ‘Dave and Nigel, originally applied for technical officers posts but it was very clear they had a lot more to offer, so I hired them as Resource Managers on the Protection side.’
‘Bringing in new blood is something the industry must do more of and the forces offer us a great opportunity to do that with people who approach their work in the right way.’
Dave Stokoe, joined Tubelines after 23 years with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). Nigel Thompson was previously a Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy.
Both agree the rail industry is similar to life in the forces. ‘It is extremely busy and like the military it can be extremely challenging with unusual hours at times,’ says Dave. ‘However we both have the attitude that you only get out of something what you put in - so we are enjoying the challenge.’