We spoke to telecoms project engineer Jay Kacou about the opportunities and innovation happening through the operator’s graduate schemes ahead of his talk, ‘Graduate Opportunities: The Digital Railway and Your Future’, at EngRec Live next Friday (30 October).
What will your presentation focus on?
My presentation is about making sure people are aware of what opportunities are out there, what we have in terms of technology and engineering activities, and what the future holds. People can drive their own future, and Network Rail gives the opportunities for people from all sorts of disciplines to improve themselves and follow their own interests.
How did you start working at Network Rail?
I was a retail manager at a supermarket and I was on the verge of being offered my own store, but I declined that and decided to go back to uni. I realised I was just wasting time, I had the potential to do better. I started uni in 2014 after an access course, studying electrical engineering.
I joined Network Rail purely by accident at the start. One of my mates at uni applied for the grad scheme and he went to the second or third stage and failed. He told me ‘Jay, you need to apply for that role. I think you’re right for it.’
I went along to the first and then the second stage, and I thought ‘Oh, this might be right for me!’ So I worked for it, got to the last stage and got the role in 2018.
I applied for an electrical engineering role at the beginning, because that’s what I studied at uni. When I received an offer, it was to join the digital railway. I thought ‘Hold on, why did I study electrical engineering to be offered a job in IT?’
It turns out it wasn’t IT though, I met my line manager at Network Rail and it turns out he was in charge of telecoms. I was located with my mate, who was also a telecoms engineer, and so at that point I thought I should stay. It was a nice fit. Now I’m learning telecoms and I think I’m doing OK, because I’ve been put forward to study for a masters.
What did the graduate scheme involve?
I joined to work on digital railway but ended up in telecoms. There were only two of us on the scheme, and we were told you can either follow the electrical path or the signalling path. I followed the signalling path and had all the signalling training a graduate would normally follow, but at the same time I was organising my telecom training as well. I decided to plan my own future.
At the end of that, I decided to actually set up a telecoms graduate scheme. The scheme is almost up and running, and it should go live by September next year. People applying for 2021 intake should be able to apply for telecoms.
How is the railway changing at the moment?
It’s changing massively. We have one of the oldest, if not the oldest railway in the world, so one of the biggest challenges we face is bringing together the new technology with the old. We are bringing new technologies from the outside world – such as aviation – to the railway, but we need to make sure they work safely and don’t cause delays.
How can digitisation help?
Over the last 20 years network usage has doubled, and it’s set to double again over the next 10 years. We need to increase capacity, some routes are close to full capacity, with no option to add more services or make platforms longer. So what do we do? This is where technology can help.
When we talk about the digital railway, one of the key things we talk about is ETCS (European Train Control System). Using that you can bring in more trains to the network with increased frequency and safety.
With the current system we use block signalling. Every time a train stops somewhere there are three blocks effectively in use – the block where the train is, a block ahead of it and a block at the back. The length of the blocks are set by the characteristics of the worst performing train, so you can imagine how long a block can be. We are moving away from the block signalling system and using the train as a block – what this means is trains running closer to each other, thanks to technology that knows where trains are, what their speed is, what their braking profile is. You can use this to increase capacity.
The biggest challenge for all the engineering disciplines is mixing old and new. You don’t just change things that work, things that are reliable, for the sake of it.
What opportunities are there to get involved?
There are loads of opportunities. The main schemes are the signalling scheme, the mechanical engineering scheme, the electrical engineering scheme and the civil and track engineering ones. Within those there are so many branches, more projects to go into. Now we are adding the telecoms discipline as well. All schemes have a business familiarisation part for six months, and within that the graduate is allowed to choose what, who and where they want to visit within Network Rail and many industry partners. Placements can even be arranged with those partners to further the graduate’s development.
Within each discipline you have your commercial department, your HR, your design team, maintenance teams, business management, research and development and many more. We have two test beds, allowing us to test all the latest technologies; the main one being RIDC (Rail Innovation Development Centre) in Melton Mowbray, and we are for example looking into bringing 5G technology onto the network. At the moment we are using GSMR, which is based on 2G technology, but we are testing the future of mobile communications. We are one of the biggest telecoms networks in the country, and most people have no idea.
Nearly any job you can think of outside the railway, you can find in it as well, and Network Rail is a prime example. People will be surprised about what they end up doing. The opportunities are there, you need to come in and discover.
'Network Rail – A career that's going places.' Click here for more information about graduate and apprentice opportunities at Network Rail, as well as career opportunities for experienced engineers.
Meet Jay and other speakers at EngRec Live 2020, the brand-new virtual careers fair for engineers. Click here to register.
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