Building Blocks for a New Skills Ecosystem in the Rail Sector: Assessment of the state of play in
employment in the railway sector

The Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking (hereinafter “the S2R JU”, “the Joint Undertaking” or “the Contracting Authority”), is a public-private partnership in the rail sector, established under Horizon 2020, to provide a platform for coordinating research activities with a view to driving innovation in the rail sector in the years to come. S2R JU has assigned the consortium TNO and NewRail a contract three studies in the “Human capital” working area of the S2R crosscutting activities (CCA) of its’ research programme: › To study the socio-economic context of the rail sector: this study analyses the socioeconomic aspects of human capital, notably the skills that will be needed in the future for the different categories of railway staff - from workers to engineers, railway managers and researchers. This study is included in the report Deliverable 1a (see Dhondt e.a., 2018a, b; D1a); To develop a preliminary prognosis on the impact of the market introduction of the S2R research and innovation programme and its technologies on human capital. This study is included in the report Deliverable 2 (see Dhondt e.a., 2019a; D2); To develop strategies and trainings based on the above analyses to bridge the skill gaps, with a special attention to ensuring increased flexibility of railway staff. Best practices from other sectors, transfer of knowledge and of workforce (mobility, etc.) are also studied for this goal. For the ‘strategies and trainings’, two reports are delivered. The first report is Deliverable 3a (D3a) in which six measures to deal with the future skills gap in the sector have been analysed and recommendations have been formulated and discussed (see Dhondt e.a., 2019b). This second report (D3b) is the fifth and final publication with as main focus the right human capital conditions to sustain the future skill development in the rail sector. These future changes, in technology and in skill gaps have been documented in reports D2 and D3a. This final report offers two overviews of what rail organisations and their stakeholders can do to create the right conditions for these future changes: What are the right conditions to create sustainable health and safety conditions in the future rail? What is helpful for the development of supportive skills ecosystems that offer the right conditions to develop future skills in the rail sector? The results as laid down in this report have been discussed during the final workshop of S2R JU in November 2018. The conclusions of this workshop are also added to the report.