My year as President is drawing to a close and in July, I shall hand over the honour of supporting the PWI as the President to Nick Millington. The time has flown by with my term undoubtedly being shaped by the legacy of Covid which I found to be a period of great pride and some frustration.
Regarding frustration, it has impinged on our ability to meet face-to-face in our regular Section and committee meetings and my own ability to visit each of the PWI Sections to meet members. However, I see that soon, perhaps in a matter of months, we will be able to restart our face-to-face meetings and personally I remain committed to visit each Section over the coming year as soon as we return to a more normal environment.

Regarding pride, I have been hugely impressed by the spirit and commitment of our community during Covid. We have risen to the challenges that Covid-19 has brought, and we have kept the railway network running safely and efficiently. This was no easy task, with many individuals and teams continuing to work directly on the front line across the country during lockdown whilst the rest of the country worked from home. This period has seen some of the best from our industry as we have innovated, developed solutions and new working practices to keep ourselves and our passengers safe and to keep trains running. For instance, within the PWI we have seen a seamless transition from face-to-face Section meetings to online, these having an enormous demand with over 100 participants at many, and the recorded material having extremely high view rates. This has not been without its own small challenges with some speakers having recently commented to me that now the meetings are recorded and saved online they have needed to create new material for presentations at other Sections rather than recycling some of their favourite old presentations!

On Covid it is clear there will be a legacy. In the UK with the advent of inoculations we can reasonably expect to return to a ‘new normal’ over the coming months. That normal is unlikely to be the same as before Covid and as I commented in the January Journal, we can reasonably expect that the recovery of passenger numbers to take several years. Industry information shows that currently passenger footfall at major stations across the country is down by 83 % compared to February 2020 and the implications for our industry are clear. Across the industry we must assume and be ready for a financial challenge; we need to take stock to make sure we are investing our funds wisely, increase our pace of innovation, increase our pace of take up and embedding innovation, and maximise value for money: all while delivering quality, performance and of course safety. Rather than be concerned over this I consider it an opportunity for our industry to evolve and become stronger. The railway is after all the best and most efficient way to transport goods across the country, to manage chronic vehicle congestion in our urban centres, and to support the UKs response to the challenge of climate change.

It is also with great sadness I recognise that our industry’s recent safety record has been damaged with staff members having lost their lives as well as members of the public being injured with one also passing away at Carmont. In the last 12 months at Eastleigh in December 2020 at Network Rail’s long welded rail facility a member of Network Rail was injured and passed away during machine maintenance activity. At Surbiton in February 2021 a member of Network Rail’s inspection team was struck by a train during site inspection activities. And at Carmont in August 2020 a passenger train hit a landslip following severe rain. Of the nine people aboard this train three were killed, two members of railway staff and one passenger, and six passengers were also injured. Whilst the causes are under investigation it is clear to me that we all need to shift perspective on how we view safety matters and as a community become more aware of, and have less acceptance of risk, particularly the risk to each other and our colleagues working in a live railway environment. So, it’s clear that as an industry we need to do more and I’m delighted that Nick Millington with his passion for safety, as our next President and also as the leader of Network Rail’s Safety Taskforce is really well placed to support our industry drive in this direction.

As my Presidential term comes to a close, I’m pleased to report that the initiative that I have championed, that of the development of a national professional competence framework, has progressed very pleasingly, steadily and robustly. I see that this massively important and transformative work will be instrumental in helping our industry meet the challenges I’ve mentioned of safety improvement and value for money. The initiative makes this possible by supporting improved alignment and cross industry transparency of our people’s skills, and by enabling better support of upskilling aligned to industry needs.

In January, the shape of the framework was agreed by the PWI Technical Board. It will be formed of seven competence groups with 40 specific competencies. Working groups are set up to develop and agree the scope of these areas, including the development of definitions of levels of competence within each. The work is on track to fully define the framework by the middle of this year, providing one model within which PWI Corporate Members (and other companies in our industry) can align their individual professional competence frameworks. Following this I will be asking member companies to work with me through my Past Presidential term to adopt and roll out the framework and align existing company schemes.

It has been a unique year full of opportunities and challenges and to finish as I started this article, it is a great privilege to be your President. I am full of pride over the efforts you have made to help us navigate the turbulent period of Covid and I’m looking forward to our transition toward our ‘new normal’ (read more on page 60). There are plenty of opportunities for us to develop, learn and innovate. And it is clear the railway industry and whole of the UK needs us to do so, and we cannot let them down.