Thread: Not enough train drivers for the qld system.

Smacks of typical managers' "do more with less" thinking to me. Unrealistic expectations of capabilities built up by middle management trying to look good so they climb the ladder. Eventually the chickens do come home to roost but the perps have long ago been promoted away.

Having seen humans operating in a number of organisations I find it miraculous that we actually achieve anything.

The 'management' I have encountered over the years specialise in over-promising and under-delivering. They do excel at diverting the blame I must say, they are good at that!

This is a short history of what has brought this situation on.

The previous govt had QR already sold after their next election. They slashed recruitment and training and encouraged long term drivers to take early retirement schemes (both voluntary and medically).

They weren't expecting to lose the election, especially with such a healthy majority. When they did lose the election and privatisation was off the table it left QR in a bit of a problem where no plans had been made for its survival as a public asset.

They did eventually start the process of recruitment but it takes time. Drivers come from the guards ranks so you need to train more guards. To train more guards you need to appoint tutor guards to train them as well as tutor drivers to train the new trainee drivers which have come from the guards ranks. The selection process takes time as does the training. 3 months to train a guard and an average 12 months for a driver and the selection process including psychometric testing and interviews can take months.

The signalling issue which delayed the line stuffed all their plans totally. They were able to train crews from Kippa Ring to Kallangur but because of the signalling issues could not sign them off from Kallangur to Lawnton and Lawnton to Dakabin because they couldn't run trains on those sections. When the line opened very few were signed off on the whole line so they needed qualified pilots which were tutors and other traincrew as they got more signed off. This left less traincrew to run all the other services and things snowballed from there.

They have had to cancel drivers training which was in progress so that they could go back to being guards and they could use their tutors to sign drivers off. I have heard that they have delayed the next guards schools because they need the tutors to sign off existing guards.

Their only way out of this is to cut back all the extra services they are running until they can get their recruitment and training back on track and it's going to take a while.

Sorry for being so long winded but that's the condensed version. It's all actually a bit more complicated than what I've posted.

Another disastrous legacy of the former premier.

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Originally Posted by Gordie

The 'management' I have encountered over the years specialise in over-promising and under-delivering. They do excel at diverting the blame I must say, they are good at that!

When I was first being "Mentored" as a manager for a largish firm, 1 of the first things the Mentor told me was,

"The basic principle of Management is to appropriate all the credit & delegate all the blame."

Jonesfam
BTW I have never run a business like that but, I do remind my staff that I am perfect, therefore, it can not be my fault even if it is!

Originally Posted by Debacle

This is a short history of what has brought this situation on.

The previous govt had QR already sold after their next election. They slashed recruitment and training and encouraged long term drivers to take early retirement schemes (both voluntary and medically).

They weren't expecting to lose the election, especially with such a healthy majority. When they did lose the election and privatisation was off the table it left QR in a bit of a problem where no plans had been made for its survival as a public asset.

They did eventually start the process of recruitment but it takes time. Drivers come from the guards ranks so you need to train more guards. To train more guards you need to appoint tutor guards to train them as well as tutor drivers to train the new trainee drivers which have come from the guards ranks. The selection process takes time as does the training. 3 months to train a guard and an average 12 months for a driver and the selection process including psychometric testing and interviews can take months.

The signalling issue which delayed the line stuffed all their plans totally. They were able to train crews from Kippa Ring to Kallangur but because of the signalling issues could not sign them off from Kallangur to Lawnton and Lawnton to Dakabin because they couldn't run trains on those sections. When the line opened very few were signed off on the whole line so they needed qualified pilots which were tutors and other traincrew as they got more signed off. This left less traincrew to run all the other services and things snowballed from there.

They have had to cancel drivers training which was in progress so that they could go back to being guards and they could use their tutors to sign drivers off. I have heard that they have delayed the next guards schools because they need the tutors to sign off existing guards.

Their only way out of this is to cut back all the extra services they are running until they can get their recruitment and training back on track and it's going to take a while.

Sorry for being so long winded but that's the condensed version. It's all actually a bit more complicated than what I've posted.

Thanks. That explains a lot. It almost sounds like the Govt of the day intended to sell off QR, and when it hit the fan, blame the mess on the purchaser. I wonder how they were going to cook the books to escape due diligence.