One thing I found particularly helpful in my professional life was developing a systems understanding of the railway, its engineering, operations and how these served the needs of its stakeholders. Early in my career, after completing a civil engineering degree I focussed primarily on bridges, structures, geotechnics and track engineering. Looking back, while I had a good level of competence in these specific areas, my horizons were not well developed in terms of understanding fully where these disciplines sat in terms of the smooth functioning of the railway system as a whole, and how the railway system fitted in with the overall needs of society. In other words, in many ways I was siloed within my specific disciplines. It was only in my mid and later career when I took on roles where I managed people from many wider operational and engineering disciplines and when I joined a section committee of the PWI that I developed a much broader perspective. I realised that developing a wider systems understanding earlier on would have been really helpful in terms of my development and in making my contributions and output more effective. I think that nowadays with interdisciplinary reviews etc, more is probably being done to encourage engineers to develop a systems understanding earlier in their careers, but there is always more that can be done…

One brilliant opportunity coming up to help in this area is this year’s Joint Institution online international seminar “High performing flexible railways systems for the future” which takes place this autumn with streamed content and live summary sessions being delivered from 22 September onwards. This Journal includes an advert for the event on page 2 with details of how you can register as a delegate, and I would thoroughly recommend that you do this. The seminar is a joint initiative organised by the PWI, the Institution of Railway Signalling Engineers (IRSE), the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the Institution of Railway Operators (IRO) and the Railway Industry Association (RIA). The seminar brings together expert international speakers from across railway engineering and operating disciplines and will give you an excellent systems understanding of the many interesting requirements, challenges and conundrums that the railway system has to overcome and deliver against now and into the future.