IRSE News 150 Nov 09.pdf

COMPETENCY MANAGEMENT
Steps to recognise a National
Licence as an equivalent to an IRSE
licence
All Australian Licences under this study,
except for QR, present similar procedures
to the IRSE Licensing Scheme.
In order to convert from Australian or
National Licences to the IRSE licence, the
applicant and/or employer must do the
following:
Register to the Licensing Registrar in
the UK in order to start the IRSE
licensing process. It includes the
payment of the fees;
Get an approved IRSE assessor to
complete the workplace assessment
with the correspondent standard IRSE
“Competency Assessment Sheets” for
the specific licence categories. This is
a straightforward process as workplace
assessments are already part of the
Australian licensing process;
Request an independent assessment
from an accredited Assessing Agent in
Australia (Ansaldo-STS or
Westinghouse);
Once the assessment is successful, all
the documentation must be sent to
the Assessing Agent who sends it to
the Licensing Registrar for the issue of
the licence.
For the individual that possess a National
Licence and wishes to work in the UK,
there may be the opportunity to
implement a cross acceptance between
the National Licence and the IRSE
Licensing scheme at the competency
level. The IRSE Australasian Section and
the IRSE Licensing UK could get an
agreement on the subject.
Conclusions
The Rail Safety Bill 2008 based on national
model legislation has revised the
guidelines whereby all rail safety workers
must obtain some form of certification of
competency in rail safety order to work in
the rail industry. Under this legislation,
Signalling Design Engineers are
categorised as rail safety workers and
must obtain the certification of
competency to perform design tasks. In
order to obtain this certification, they
must be trained and/or assessed by
Register Training Organisations (RTOs).
The industry has a two year period to
comply with the ruling of this new
legislation. As the legislation does not
provide any details as to what certification
to obtain, most companies in the industry
are creating a custom competency
management system. Some, in particular
international companies, have chosen to
use the IRSE licensing instead of creating
their own. At the moment, RailCorp and
ARTC are leading the way on Competency
Management systems used for Design
certification. They both have defined and
implemented a set of standard
competencies that employees and
subcontractors are expected to meet.
In order to operate Australia wide,
design engineers need to meet multiple
competency certifications, which is
inconvenient and detrimental to the
industry. Therefore, it is sensible that the
Railway industry develops a National
Competence Management System that,
where possible, aligns skill sets,
competencies, processes and level of
assessed competency to ensure portability
amongst Australian states. Such
Competence Management System brings
multiple benefits, single and portable
accreditation within Australia, reduction
on company’s internal training costs,
uniform procedures and practices for the
assessment of the designing staff and
increased staff mobility among others.
Addressing the first subject of this
study, there are already efforts within the
industry heading towards a National
licence scheme. For example, the RISSB
gave funding to the RTIIC to implement
an Australian Competency Management
System and a registration of signalling
engineering resource and competencies.
Hence, there is the will within the industry
and the resource allocation, both money
and human, driving the process.
Moreover, this study has demonstrated
that there are sufficient commonalities
between the existing Australian
competency schemes in order to bring
them into a single Australian scheme.
The second subject of this research is
to determine whether the IRSE scheme is
a viable baseline to develop a National
Competence Management System. In
fact, some of the competency
management systems already developed
by railway operated organisations, and
some under development, have used the
IRSE scheme as inspiration.
In order to identify whether the
National Competency System could build
upon the IRSE licensing or any of the
relevant Australian competency
certification schemes, section 8.2 of this
report indicates what steps are necessary
for the IRSE scheme and the relevant
Australian competency schemes to be
acceptable for national recognition
purposes. One of the findings indicates
that the Railway industry needs to define
bridging training courses and gap courses
in order to validate either candidate
baseline into a national wide licence.
In terms of using the IRSE scheme as
baseline for the National Australian
scheme, this study concludes that
although the IRSE scheme has a more
rigorous assessment processes than the
existing Australian schemes, they are
comparable to it. The National scheme
should be based on the Australian
schemes. They are already developed and
reasonably priced compared to the IRSE
licence. Also, the conversion / validation
process from the Australian licence to the
National licence will be shorter and
cheaper than the process for conversion /
validation from the IRSE licence to an
Australian or National licence.
As a final remark, the industry has
already identified the development of a
National Management System as an
important matter and it is heading in the
right direction, with RailCorp and ARTC
leading the way. Unfortunately, despite
the industry efforts, a National scheme will
not be ready to comply with the Rail
Safety legislation by the end of 2010.
Future Work
In the short term, it is important to extend
the study herein to include other licensing
categories such as testing, commissioning,
installation and maintenance. In the long
term, it is important to develop a National
Competency Management scheme. The
pilot project lead by Glenn Miller in
Victoria is a step in the right direction.
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IRSE NEWS | ISSUE 150 | NOVEMBER 2009