Question on mid-career change opportunities in wider rail sector.

[thruud]

Hi everyone and happy New Year!

I’m looking for a bit of wisdom and advice here and would welcome the thoughts of posters. Essentially I’m looking for a career change into the Railway / transport sector. My background is in relatively senior Government / Armed Forces, where I’ve spent a lot of time working on crisis management, stakeholder management, operational delivery and fixing problems to keep things on track.

I’ve always admired the rail sector as an area that fundamentally is about operational delivery and overcoming a myriad of challenges to keep on delivering a very good service while working in a complex and challenging environment.

I’m curious about what opportunities may exist for mid career professionals in the sector to work in the business in the operational delivery and crisis management space – what sort of work is there, is it openly advertised and how many openings are there in more senior levels (and also what sort of salary packages are on offer?).

Any advice people could offer would be massively appreciated,

Thanks,

 

[Supercoss]

NetworkRail operates control centre based Incident Officers & Senior Incident Officers although these are being done away with on some routes with previous ( existing) roles of Current Operations Manager, Route Control Manager and Incident Controller Dealing with ‘ crisis management’ directing staff on the ground, Mobile Operations Managers and Mobile Incident Officers(within M25 sphere) Local Operations Managers - Response and the various functions of fault / rapid response.
I work with a few ex services staff who perform the above roles and an ever increasing amount of ex blue light responders who are joining the railway which has many similar set ups similar to military and first responders roles and indeed active recruitment to encourage ex forces staff.
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/careers/ex-forces/

 

[Highlandspring]

NetworkRail operates control centre based Incident Officers & Senior Incident Officers although these are being done away with on some routes

One sensible route never bothered with them in the first place.

 

[Supercoss]

The business model ‘ copied & pasted’ from and brought with staff who joined from ‘ The Tube’ seems to be being abandoned with LNW Route the latest to pull the plug

 

[Stigy]

I echo looking at Network Rail at Incident Controller type roles. These would be ideal for somebody with your experiences in other/similar field. The salary is good, although the hours can be unsociable so depends what you’re looking for in that respect?

 

[Highlandspring]

The only issue is that it’s rare for Control jobs (in NR anyway) to be advertised externally. For IC jobs there’s always fierce internal competition.

 

[Tom Quinne]

Who you know type jobs those in control seek to be regardless of actual about.

 

[Highlandspring]

¿Qué?

 

[Tom Quinne]

*seem to be...

Unable to edit for some reason.

 

[Stigy]

The only issue is that it’s rare for Control jobs (in NR anyway) to be advertised externally. For IC jobs there’s always fierce internal competition.

They advertised in the past couple of weeks for two Incident Control posts. I agree it's not frequent though, same as MOM and LOM jobs.

 

[thruud]

Thanks folks, thats extremely helpful food for thought. I shall go away and do a bit more digging.

Cheers!