198107 – Cumming – Staff Training – VicRail

Recruitment into the tradesman level is generally by apprenticeship. Retirement and resignation losses are covered by planned replacement through apprenticeship and only extraordinary losses are filled by recruitment from outside industry. The fact that both recruitment methods are use in use necessitates training procedures to cover each requirement, and as this area is to be the topic of my detail presentation, I will not expand on it at this time.

Technical Officer recruitment in Vic Rail is carried out by external advertisement and interview of Certificate of Technology holders. Institute graduates and departmental post trade COT students comprise the group of applicants. In this field VicRail provides encouragement and training to outstanding apprentices by scholarships for COT study and by the employment of Signal Maintenance Technicians as draftsmen while they undergo Certificate of Technology Study in Electrical Engineering or Communications.

The stringent employment policies of the last three years have limited the extent to which Signal Maintenance Technicians can now be employed away from their classified task, and therefore this resource area is now very restricted. The same employment policies have so Limited the intake of Technical Officers that no current training program is in course; however historically, newly inducted technical officers are given selected training in the post trade Maintenance Technician course to provide the required background to enable them to progress through the various stages of design works.

Most Technical Officers in the Design Office were started in the design of flashing light signals, progressing to country tracklocking, automatic signalling, relay interlocking, route setting etc. The advancement in training has been matched to the officer’s progression, however, it must be reiterated that the intake of technical officers in recent years has been very limited.

Technical Officer training is carried out in two modes (1) Formal lectures at the Signal Training School. (2) One to one instruction with immediate supervising engineers in participation in designing teams. The former covers the requirements of major interlocking works and staff attend lectures in relay interlocking, geographic circuitry and route setting systems. Works of this magnitude may otherwise remain outside the area of a Technical Officer’s work experience for many years, and it is necessary to ensure that the staff are competent in those areas. The latter method encompasses the less complex design works:level crossing protection, automatic signalling, and country tracklocking works. In performing jobs of this nature it is practical to use supervising Engineer instruction as an important part of the instruction program.