In the previous TechSoc blog, Con talked about the importance of Continuous Professional Development (CPD); in this one I'll suggest a CPD activity to assist in the development of sustainable railways.
One of the factors we consider when scheduling TechSoc presentations is how to give attendees experience from beyond their own bailiwick. Learning from experience outside of one's own discipline, and industry is a key pillar of effective CPD. Transport for London already covers every conceivable engineering discipline over a wide array of transport modes (heavy metro, light rail, mainline, surface transport, river transport and even cable cars) and our talks programme has covered all of these over the years - but TechSoc still aims to bring experience from beyond TfL and beyond the railway industry into each year's programme.
A particular example of where we can learn from other industries is sustainability. Enhancing the sustainability of how we create, use and maintain infrastructure is a global imperative if we wish to limit the effects of climate change. While electrically-powered railways already make a significant positive contribution to sustainable transport, there is always room for further improvement.
Sustainability is also about far more than carbon footprints and carbon savings. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines sustainability as “causing, or made in a way that causes, little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time.” This definition covers broader issues such as minimising pollution and appropriate use of finite resources. The United Nations goes even further and includes social sustainability issues in their set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals – these can be found at https://sdgs.un.org/goals and https://youtu.be/0XTBYMfZyrM.
So what about CPD? The annual Futurebuild exhibition (https://www.futurebuild.co.uk/) covers new construction technologies, with a strong bias toward improving sustainability of the built environment, with a slightly wider-ranging conference running during the exhibition.
While primarily a trade show, there’s nothing to stop people with sufficient interest attending in a personal capacity. I've attended numerous times over the past 15 years and gained valuable insights on products and techniques to improve sustainability which has helped to stimulate and guide my thinking both inside and outside work.
It's easy to look at the Futurebuild programme and think "But it's just about buildings?" and "Maybe it might be useful to someone building a control centre, or a depot, or a station?" "What does this have to do with a signalling, comms or rolling stock engineer?" I'd suggest that a working knowledge of sustainability needs to be developed at each level of our industry, from those who sponsor and scope projects, to those in every discipline who design, install, test, commission and maintain. Some of that knowledge is about what factors matter and how much effort is justified (don't miss the elephant in the room but don't sweat the small stuff!) and some of it concerns the range of potential solutions available. This gives us the tools to consider issues such as:
- How much energy gets used for heating and cooling rolling stock, and how could the latest building insulating materials be used to reduce this energy?
- How much of the embodied energy for constructing a signal or a radio mast comes from the concrete mass foundation - and what other fixing solutions could be used?
- How can energy saving techniques and diverse energy sources could be used by train control and communication systems - both for their operation, and for keeping them in an appropriately controlled environment?
It's a certainty that the knowledge gained will be useful beyond "work" - maybe for enhancing the efficiency of your home or work that you do in the voluntary sector. (I'm a strong believer that lessons leaned and experience gained outside of the work environment can be transferred to benefit the day job.)
In 2025 Futurebuild will be held between 4-6 March at the ExCeL Centre in London; online registration is free at https://www.futurebuild.co.uk/ Treat yourself to a day of CPD and return with some new insights. Those of you who are Chartered or working towards Chartership - don't forget to include this in your CPD logs!
