CP7 Resourcing Readiness: How Rail Organisations Are Preparing Their Workforce Strategy

As the UK rail industry approaches Control Period 7 (CP7), spanning 2024 to 2029, organisations across the sector are sharpening their focus on one critical element: workforce readiness. While investment priorities, sustainability, and technological upgrades capture headlines, it is the people delivering these programmes who will determine their ultimate success.

Navigating the Skills Shortage Challenge

The rail industry faces well-documented skills shortages. A significant portion of the workforce is nearing retirement age, while the demand for specialist skills in areas like electrification, digital signalling (ETCS), and asset management continues to grow. Without strategic intervention, this imbalance risks delaying key projects and driving up costs.

This shortage isn’t just about numbers—it’s about the right mix of expertise. As projects become more technologically advanced, traditional skills must be complemented with digital capabilities, data literacy, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Safety Compliance: An Increasingly Complex Landscape

Safety remains the non-negotiable foundation of rail delivery, but achieving compliance in an evolving regulatory environment brings new challenges. As projects adopt more advanced technologies and delivery models, the responsibility to maintain rigorous safety standards falls across increasingly dispersed teams, including subcontractors and third-party suppliers.

Resourcing strategies now need to go beyond just filling roles—they must ensure that the people occupying those roles are fully trained, certified, and actively engaged in continuous professional development. The cost of failure here isn’t just financial; it’s reputational and, critically, about lives.

Building Flexible, Future-Proof Delivery Teams

In response to these pressures, forward-looking rail clients and suppliers are shifting away from static resourcing models in favour of flexible, integrated delivery teams. These models often combine permanent staff, specialist contractors, consultancy partners, and, increasingly, digital solutions like workforce planning tools and competency management systems.

Some organisations are taking proactive steps by:

• Developing talent pipelines through graduate schemes, apprenticeships, and collaboration with technical colleges.
• Investing in cross-training to create multi-skilled teams capable of flexing across project phases.
• Strengthening supplier partnerships to secure access to niche skills without long-term overheads.
• Leveraging data and analytics to predict workforce gaps well in advance, aligning recruitment and training with future project demands.

Collaboration Is Key
The rail industry does not operate in isolation. Success in CP7 will hinge on genuine collaboration between clients, Tier 1 contractors, SMEs, and professional bodies. Sharing knowledge, standardising competency frameworks, and co-developing skills initiatives are no longer optional—they are essential.

Ultimately, CP7 offers the sector not just a challenge, but an opportunity to build a more resilient, adaptive, and skilled workforce that can deliver safer, smarter, and more sustainable rail projects.

Workforce readiness for CP7 isn’t just about headcount—it’s about capability, flexibility, and foresight. Organisations that start planning today—investing in people, technology, and partnerships—will be the ones positioned to deliver successful outcomes across the next five years and beyond.