Northern Rail: On track for success

Summary

A major subsidiary of the Department for Transport's rail network, Northern Rail, has high health and safety and Environmental training standards. Astutis was invited to partner with them to develop a scalable training solution for their enterprise.

Challenge

With over 2500 train services every day visiting nearly 550 locations, Northern Rail play a vital role in the north of England by connecting tens of thousands of people to work, family, leisure, education every day. 

In 2016 Northern Rail invited us to tender for the opportunity to become their partner of choice for all Health, Safety and Environmental training across their whole network and 6,000 strong team. The challenge was to develop a training programme that supported the desire to centralise all HSE training investments and take complete control of delivery, consistency and quality of course delivery.

The Solution

We were delighted to design a tailored solution to allow Northern the opportunity to centralise, control, monitor and importantly report on progress.

The Results

The Northern Rail training programme contains a robust suite of HSE courses through our joint venture, including IOSH, NEBOSH and ISEP, formerly knows as IEMA, accredited courses. The story doesn’t end there, as part of the programme, as we also provide tailored Astutis Approved training, including Fire Risk Assessment and Contractor courses, all delivered via our in-house team, virtual delivery, open training network and e-learning.

When COVID restrictions were introduced, we worked with Northern Rail to transform training delivery for many of their courses from the physical classroom to virtual classroom and online learning. Feedback remains equally as superb as ever. 

Highlights

Possibly the most rewarding part of our partnership has been our mutual agility to curate and deliver tailored online courses for the 6,000 employees.

These courses have been rolled out and hosted on Northern Rail's own Learning Management System, which allows them unlimited access to the course and materials without the need for additional budget.

Northern Rail employees now have access to 15 Astutis training courses on subjects such as environmental sustainability, customer safety on trains and platforms, COSHH, Asbestos, and one of our personal favourites, 'The Ten Most Common Hazards within Northern'.