Thus the skills agenda remains (if anything) of even greater importance now than when the commitment to create the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering was first made. NSARE is a valuable industry/Government initiative that needs to be both strengthened and funded realistically for the scale of the task in hand - in the supply industry, certainly, but also among the client bodies.
It is remarkable that in these circumstances the most recent edition of Network Rail’s Supplier Perception Survey should have shown marked improvement compared with earlier years, and Network Rail is to be congratulated on the achievement.
Moreover, the cross-industry work now going on in the Asset Programme and Supply Chain Management Group of the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) is showing signs of generating substantial potential returns from optimising track access and usage. Indeed, supply industry surveys have played an important part in this, with respondents emphasising the importance of joint contractor/client and client/TOC engagement from the earliest stages in project development.
