Panel: To ‘reimagine rail,’ railroads must attract highly skilled workers
5/3/2021
By Julie Sneider, Senior Associate Editor
The growing need for a workforce prepared to handle the rail industry’s increasingly complex and innovative technology emerged as a key topic of discussion last week during the “Reimagining Rail” webinar hosted by the Railway Engineering-Maintenance Suppliers Association (REMSA) and Stahl Recruiting.
The hour-long conversation featured four panelists, including moderator Jeffrey Bennett, president of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials DC, who has experience in freight and passenger rail; Caroline Decker, Amtrak vice president of the Northeast Corridor service line; Greg Deibler, director of asset health at the Association of American Railroads (AAR); and Chen Zhou, deputy program director at Jacobs Engineering and a former of engineer at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
The webinar’s discussion focused on the future of the rail sector, including its challenges and innovations. When it came to the industry’s most “exciting” trajectory, the panelists agreed the high-tech evolution of railroading is what impresses them the most.
The Class Is are investing heavily in new technology, Deibler said. For example, wayside detection systems now employ automated inspection technologies to locate defects that can impact safety and performance.
“These devices are employing deep learning and machine vision, and they’re able to photograph many angles of the rail car at track speed and can detect even minor issues,” said Deibler, who began his rail career at Norfolk Southern Railway.
“Algorithms are becoming more complex by the day, and the entire rail car is being inspected at a very high level of sophistication,” Deibler said. “The safety technology piece of that is undeniable and will drive the needle for the industry and all the stakeholders.”
Decker also noted the state-of-the-art, high-speed Acela trainsets that Amtrak is slated to roll out on the Northeast Corridor later this year. The new Alstom trains will be capable of traveling up to 160 mph — 10 mph faster than the 20-year-old trains they will replace. The technology involved in the next generation of trains is to U.S. passenger rail what 5G technology is to telecommunications, Decker said.
While the panelists agreed that rail technology is evolving at “light speed” — as Decker put it — railroads and related businesses are competing with other industries in attracting and retaining highly skilled younger workers to run these complex systems.
“Working for a private consulting firm has changed my perspective about the critical challenges facing the rail industry, and I now believe that the critical challenge is human resources,” said Zhou.
She cited two Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) reports — one in 2011 and another in 2016 — that found the industry’s top workforce issues are: the aging population of railroaders, and finding enough young — and diverse — employees to succeed them.
Although railroads and transit agencies provide good hands-on training to its engineers and maintenance employees, recruiting new workers remains a challenge, Zhou believes. Only 14 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada currently offer rail-specific engineering programs, she said.
“We see more young kids willing to go to work for industries other than the railroads — sometimes they think railroads aren’t fun or the best place to work,” she said.
'Adept Programmers' Wanted
The rail industry needs to raise its profile so that more recent graduates with degrees in high-tech fields see railroading as a career option, AAR’s Deibler said.
“In my realm, the focus is on asset health and the state-of-good-repair of the North American fleet,” he said. “There’s a flood of Big Data coming out to be used in preventing [equipment] failures. So the interest in the younger generations is going to be widespread. We will need a lot of adept programmers — people who are not necessarily traditional railroaders but who come from all walks of life.”
On the issue of workforce diversity, Bennett asked Decker and Zhou if, as women in a historically male-dominated field. Both women described their experiences in the industry as positive. In particular, Decker shared a story about Wick Moorman, whom she got to know when he was president and CEO of Amtrak from 2016 to 2017. Prior to his stint at Amtrak, Moorman spent his decades-long rail career at Norfolk Southern Railway, where he retired in 2015 as the chairman, president and CEO.
While at Amtrak, Moorman aided Decker’s efforts to start a networking group for Amtrak’s female railroaders. Decker had long tried to foster an environment that encouraged younger women to seek leadership roles within the organization, and Moorman put her in touch with the WiNS — Women in Norfolk Southern — networking group. That connection helped Decker launch the “Notch 8” group for women at Amtrak.
“Women at Amtrak represent 20 percent of our total workforce, so we really are in the minority,” said Decker. “Wick was really instrumental in the evolution of our Notch 8 group.”
As the U.S. rail system continues to evolve technologically, it’s even more important that North railroads and companies that work with them recruit workers with a global understanding of the industry, said Zhou.
“From the engineering consulting firm perspective, we [Jacobs] are looking into the diversity of engineering teams and also their international experience,” she said. “Jacobs is [a] leading high-speed rail design firm, and we have done railroad design projects around the world. … With a diversified workforce, we are able to send our engineers to different countries to learn how they build the railroads. For engineering firms to survive the rail industry’s future challenges, this [diversity] is a must.”
