Rail skills for efficient delivery: a supply chain perspective
The content of this paper draws on discussions at the Railway Industry Association’s Future of Rail: Skills thought leadership event held in partnership with the National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR) on 11 February 2026, as well as wider research and engagement with RIA members.
1. Introduction
The UK rail sector is entering a period of generational change. The creation of Great British Railways (GBR), public expectations, climate and energy resilience, digital opportunities and the drive to decarbonise are all raising expectations of what the UK’s railway must deliver over the next decade. At the same time, the industry is being asked to do more, faster and with increasing efficiently
In this context, skills is a critical delivery issue. If the industry does not change how it plans, develops and deploys capability, it will increasingly struggle to translate ambition into outcomes. Shortages in key roles, long training lead times and weak visibility of future demand all make it harder to mobilise teams, manage risk and maintain productivity across major programmes. The result could be slower delivery, higher costs and less value for money.
Rail reform is not just a structural change, but an opportunity to do things differently. GBR and the wider reform agenda offers the chance to align planning, procurement, funding, competency and workforce development more effectively, so that skills become a source of resilience rather than a delivery constraint. If that opportunity is used well, the industry can build a more stable, adaptable and productive workforce capable of delivering the railway the country needs.
2. Insights from the current rail skills system
• NSAR forecasts suggest that the rail industry will require a workforce of around 220,000 people over the five-year period to 2030 across operations, infrastructure and the supply chain.1
• The current rail workforce, according to the NSAR annual workforce survey, sits at just over 221,000, having fallen from 240,000 across 2019-2023 2
• The workforce is ageing, with projections predicting the loss of tens of thousands of experienced workers by 2030 through retirement and other forms of attrition. NSAR forecasts that the industry could lose up to 90,000 skilled workers by 2030.3
• Skills shortage vacancies make up a high share (38%) of rail vacancies.4
• The current skills and competency system is stronger on technical and safety accreditation rather than on management, leadership and behavioural capability.
• Previous initiatives have raised the profile of skills and apprenticeships, but they have not fully delivered other career pathways such as mid-career conversion and structured upskilling of the existing workforce.5
• New technologies and delivery methods mean a significant share of the workforce may need to be retrained for the “future railway.”6
• Investment in training has been highly sensitive to funding cycles, and workforce contraction has followed recent significant downturns in work.7
3. Key findings
• The pace and scale of rail programmes could be limited by persistent shortages in key disciplines, long training lead times and the loss of experienced staff coupled with rising complexity, digitalisation and decarbonisation.
• The problem is systemic; it is not just about recruitment. The issue is not simply filling vacancies; it is the way funding cycles often characterised by boom-and-bust, procurement models and fragmented planning make it difficult for employers to invest in training and recruitment with confidence.8 Problematic features and their outcomes include:
System Feature
Short funding cycles
Price-driven procurement
Fragmented clients
Programme uncertainty
Behaviour it Creates
Short-term hiring
Minimal training investment
Inconsistent capability requirements
Workforce contraction between projects
• Stop-start demand weakens productivity. When projects repeatedly mobilise and demobilise, teams are broken up, knowledge is lost and training is duplicated, which raises cost and reduces delivery efficiency, negatively impacting productivity For SMEs this jeopardises their very existence. Two recent Transport Select Committee reports reinforce this picture, highlighting that without clear, long-term pipelines of work, suppliers are understandably reluctant to commit to long lead training and recruitment.9
• Policy signals are not yet strong enough to shift behaviour. The National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) calling for procurement to address 'specific skills gaps and facilitate access to training and development opportunities' and framing a high-skilled workforce as central to driving growth and productivity.10 These are meaningful commitments. However, they are not yet being translated consistently into rail client actions on the ground and are not yet driving employer decisions on training and capability investment in the way they should.
• The current competency system prioritises compliance over workforce portability Existing frameworks are overly focused on reducing client risk, but they do too little to support crossproject mobility, lessen remobilisation costs or recognise prior learning. This also reduces the willingness of suppliers to invest. If competencies cannot travel easily between clients and projects, firms face repeated retraining costs and weaker returns on investing in people.
• Previous skills strategies have over-relied on early career routes. Apprenticeships matter, but the current model has not fully developed mid-career conversion, modular upskilling or retraining routes for experienced workers. The Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy’s (TISS) focus on apprenticeships was shown to be ill-placed: with the 30,000 new apprenticeship starts by 2020 target being reforecast to 15,200, and only 11,254 were created.11
• Skills need to be built into how value for money, productivity and safety are defined and measured, not treated as an optional nice-to-have.
• Data weaknesses make strategic planning harder. Because rail skills data is spread across multiple statistical categories, the industry lacks a clear and shared picture of where shortages are emerging and where interventions should be targeted.
• Good practice exists, but it is not yet system wide. Programmes such as HS2 show that clear pipelines, brokered recruitment and aligned incentives will support skills growth, but these approaches are not yet embedded across the whole rail system.12
4. A more strategic approach to rail industry skills
Rail reform offers a once in a generation opportunity to address the skills challenges. A more strategic rail skills approach should ensure the industry has the workforce capability it requires to deliver a more modern, productive and resilient railway. That means building a system that can support delivery not just today, but through the next decade of investment and digital change.
Objectives:
The first objective must be to develop a stable, system-wide workforce that can deliver planned investment reliably. The railway needs enough people, but it also needs the right skills in the right place at the right time. Skills should therefore be treated as a core part of delivery resilience, not as a variable to be managed after major decisions have already been made.
The second objective is to shape the workforce for the railway system that the industry is moving towards. This means planning skills development alongside infrastructure investment, digitalisation, new technology and decarbonisation, rather than trying to catch up after change has already taken place. A future-ready skills system should strengthen productivity, support innovation and help the industry retain experience while building new capability.
Enablers:
The supply chain must sit at the centre of workforce planning. It is where most capability is created, funded and deployed, and where commercial risk has the greatest influence on training investment and workforce retention. A strategic approach should therefore recognise the realities across the supply chain and appreciate that not all employers have the same capacity to absorb uncertainty.
Workforce capability should be treated as a strategic asset, not a short-term cost. Previous approaches have shown that simply recognising the importance of skills is not enough if funding cycles, procurement practice and accountability still encourage short-term behaviour.13 If the industry wants more resilient capability, the conditions in which training and development are seen as part of long-term value, not as optional overhead, must be created.
Competency frameworks should be reformed so that they support mobility, productivity and portability across the supply chain. Current arrangements are often too focused on client-specific compliance, which increases duplication and makes it harder for businesses to move people efficiently between projects. A better system would recognise prior learning, reduce repeated certification and make it easier to deploy skilled people where they are most needed.
The sector also needs a governance and funding framework that gives employers clearer signals about future demand. Multi-year investment pipelines with boom-and-bust smoothed, stable plans and better alignment between funding and delivery will make it easier for businesses to justify long-lead training and to build the specialist capability required for major programmes.
Skills commitments need to be built into contracts in a way that are practical, consistent and measurable, so that suppliers have both the incentive and the confidence to invest in people. If social value and skills requirements are not tracked properly after contract award, they risk becoming little more than a bidding exercise.14
Finally, the industry needs better data collection, with stronger coordination. Improved workforce data would help the sector and clients understand where shortages are most acute, how capability is changing and which interventions are having an impact.
5. Recommendations
1. Establish a Rail Skills Mission Board, modelled on the Construction Leadership Council’s Skills Mission Board
The UK rail industry needs a strong mechanism where all parties can come together to agree on skills priorities and be held accountable for delivering them. A Skills Mission Board, spanning major public clients and suppliers, should have a clear mandate to coordinate skills strategy, develop a clear narrative to promote railway careers, monitor delivery and bring clients, suppliers, training providers and workforce representatives into a single leadership structure. The Construction Leadership Council’s (CLC) Skills Mission Board serves as a model to follow, bringing industry and Government together around shared skills priorities.15 The Board could draw on the skills intelligence and sector expertise already developed in the rail ecosystem – including members of the NSAR Board.
2. Put the supply chain at the centre of delivery
The businesses that build, maintain, renew and enhance the railway need to be central to any workforce plan, because they are the ones overseeing the training and taking the financial risk. The Rail Skills Mission Board should develop a Supply Chain Skills Plan with suppliers across the system, so that workforce planning reflects how capability is created and funded. The plan should cover, for example, how levy and skills funding will be made more accessible to smaller businesses; how modular and short course provision will be shaped around their needs; and how skills standards will be updated in partnership with employers to reflect emerging technologies.
3. Rework competency frameworks
The current system of qualifications and certifications needs to be simplified and standardised across clients Network Rail needs to make competency frameworks more portable and capability-based – allowing the workforce to move more easily across projects and employers without unnecessary duplication. Competency frameworks should enable cross-client recognition of core competencies, reduce duplications in certification, recognise prior learning and standardise capability definitions for key roles. Doing so will enable efficient labour mobility as well as allowing more members of the workforce to be “day one productive” when moving between projects and employers.
4. Link workforce planning to investment pipelines
Clear plans for what workers will be needed and when allows employers to plan training and recruitment more efficiently Every major programme and asset strategy should ideally be accompanied by a workforce plan. Forward-looking plans for rolling stock, infrastructure renewals and enhancements should be published regularly so employers can plan training, recruitment and progression with greater certainty. The upcoming Rolling Stock and Infrastructure and Future Electric Railway Strategies, expected in summer 2026, need to have associated workforce plans to ensure efficient delivery.
5. Expand career pathways beyond apprenticeships
The supply chain and GBR must work together to create a coherent set of career and capability pathways that support not only traditional apprenticeships but also mid-career conversion routes, modular up- and re-skilling, and structured progression into hybrid roles that combine technical, digital and programme skills. This should learn from the Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy, where ambitions around career changers and mid-career pathways were identified, but not fully developed, providing a foundation to embed these routes more efficiently in the future.
6. Build skills incentives into supply chain contracts and track them
Network Rail, GBR and other rail clients should use outcome-based procurement requirements, backed by monitoring, so that social value commitments translate into real investment in people. These expectations should be proportionate and consistent across clients, so that suppliers can invest once and deploy capability across the system. These outcomes must be tracked so social value requirements do not become just a ‘tick-box’ exercise at tender stage. The positive potential of tying funding decisions, project plans and contract requirements has been reflected in the National Procurement Policy Statement’s (NPPS) emphasis on skills and social value and in the Government’s 2021 ‘Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030’ call for outcome-focused delivery and investment in skills.16
7. Align funding and data around workforce capability
On funding: secure multi-year settlements and clear work pipelines that give employers –including those across the supply chain – the confidence to make long-term investments in people. Funding mechanisms should be explicitly designed to support training, reskilling and workforce development over sustained periods, rather than fluctuating with short-term boomand-bust project cycles.
On data: significantly improve the collection, sharing and coordination of workforce and skills information across the sector, including better rail-specific coverage in national surveys and datasets. The Rail Skills Mission Board should lead the development of a shared data and evaluation framework, enabling clearer and more timely tracking of skills needs against skills supply, and supporting evidence-based planning by employers, clients and Government alike.
For more information, please contact RIA Policy Executive Reuben Bull, at Reuben.Bull@riagb.org.uk and 020 7201 0777 / 07890 660675.
1 National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR), Annual Workforce Survey 2025
2 NSAR, Annual Workforce Survey 2025 and previous annual surveys.
3 NSAR, 2025 Workforce Survey
4 Department for Education, Employer Skills Survey 2024 The Employer Skills Survey only registers data for two-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes. Two digit SIC codes are the lowest level of specificity, defining a broad industry sector. A Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code is a two-digit to five-digit number assigned to companies to identify their primary business activities. UK companies must select at least one, but up to four, SIC codes. Rail relevant SIC codes as follows: Manufacture of: basic metals (24), electrical equipment (27), other transport equipment (30); Repair and installation of machinery and equipment (33); Civil Engineering (42); Specialised construction activities (43); Telecommunications (61); Architectural and engineering activities; technical testing and analysis (71). https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-manuals-andguidelines/w/ks-gq-24-007
5 Department for Transport. Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy: 4 Years of Progress
6 NSAR, Future Skills Assessment for the Transport Sector. Suggests that one in eight existing workers may need to be significantly retrained to support the transition to the “future railway.”
7 NSAR, Navigating the Skills Shortage. Annual Rail Workforce Survey 2024 & NSAR, Annual Workforce Survey 2025
8 For example see Alstom’s Submission to the Transport Select Committee inquiry into Transport Manufacturing Skills.
9 Transport Select Committee. 5th Report – Engine for growth: securing skills for transport manufacturing & 7th Report – Rail investment pipelines: ending boom and bust.
10 Cabinet Office, National Procurement Policy Statement.
11 Department for Transport. Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy: 4 Years of Progress
12 HS2, Mind the Skills Gap. HS2, Skills Employment and Education Strategy
13 Department for Transport. Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy: 4 Years of Progress
14 Railway Industry Association. RIA Response to Public Procurement: Growing British Industry, Jobs and Skills Consultation.
15 Construction Leadership Council. Construction Launches Skills Mission. & Thousands more to get the tools they need to start construction careers.
16 Cabinet Office. National Procurement Policy Statement. 2025 & Infrastructure and Projects Authority. Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030