Are you ready to change the world, and the railway industry? The tremendous digital leap is – first and foremost – a change in expertise and culture
Are you ready to change the world, and the railway industry? The tremendous digital leap is – first and foremost – a change in expertise and culture
Finland is among the first EU countries to equip long railway connections with digitalised systems of the future based on 4G and 5G technologies. On the Finnish scale, Digirail is an unprecedented development project that aims to develop and implement a modern train control system for railways. The project takes into account and anticipates the future of the railway industry several decades ahead.
No single party is able to make the Digirail leap on their own, and implementing the change will require unprecedented cooperation and sharing of information across all organisational boundaries. As a project, Digirail requires a wide variety of expertise from the project organisation. Most of the people working on Digirail are ironclad professionals of the railway industry, but they will also need expertise in areas outside of their own field, such as in cyber security and 5G technologies, for example.
Nobody knows everything – expertise development is a continuous process
The work group set up to consider the development of expertise in the Digirail project concerns itself with questions of how expertise is developed in the project and the railway industry at large in ways that anticipate future needs in terms of quality, quantity and timing. The questions that we ponder ensure that expertise develops in conjunction with the progress of the project.
- What kind of expertise do we need to be successful now and in the future, when do we need it and to what extent?
- How do we develop the expertise of personnel in different roles, and how is the required new know-how to be achieved?
- What kind of expertise do we bring to the project through our own recruitment, what can be acquired from partners as services and what kind of new know-how do we create ourselves?
- How do we prepare the expertise and receptiveness of the railway industry to meet future needs?
- How do we organise training as a project? What do we communicate about?
- What expertise are we developing in cooperation with different stakeholder groups?
A culture of experimentation, communality and information sharing is a critical success factor in the development of expertise.
It is not easy to define the future. The goal of the people involved in the project is to generate new knowledge, share experiences, learn from each other and constantly reflect on the accumulated new experiences. It is easier to withstand the unavoidable uncertainty and threat of failure when support is in place and the project has a fruitful and safe atmosphere for cooperation. Being a Gyro Gearloose is easier when you also have permission to fail.
The Digirail project is the Finnish railway industry's development story into a European leader also in the field of ERMTS
Digirail is not just a project. It is a development story of the railway industry that brings all operators in the sector on a shared journey of cooperation and learning. With their work, people involved in Digirail weave the story of how Finland becomes a leading country in Europe also in terms of ERMTS through experimentation, failure, learning and success.
Read the full article Digirata ja rautatiealan osaamismurros [Digirail and the expertise revolution in the railway industry] in Rautatietekniikka magazine (1/2023). Welado’s Noora Haverinen and Fintraffic’s Katri Häkki talk about the Digirail project.
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noora.haverinen@welado.fi