By Johnny Sharp

One of the main issues for the bus industry was summarised succinctly by the Department for Transport back in its 2021 report National Bus Strategy: Capacity and Capability. “Overall team capacity has declined over time, due to a shortage of qualified individuals and reliance on long-service staff members approaching retirement,” was among its conclusions.

That’s one of the problems Stelios Rodoulis is aiming to address in his role as the Head of the Bus Centre of Excellence (BCoE), an organisation set up to tackle those and other issues in the service. “There is a big skills shortage,” he admits. “And this is where we come in, offering webinars, events, conferences, and training opportunities.”

Through BCoE, members learn from each other by sharing examples of best practice and looking at real-life case studies. As a style of learning it adopts a practically focused ‘70:20:10’ approach, which has been found to be effective in studies of how people learn most effectively in a professional environment (70% challenging assignments, 20 percent developmental relationships and 10% coursework and training).

Networking groups, meanwhile, bring bus professionals together to focus on various topics that may be of relevance to them, from the Bus Knowledge Sharing and Incident Network (identifying trends and areas in need of research) to the Zero Emissions Buses Network – promoting understanding of new sustainable fleets and answering any questions from members.

Opportunities to learn

Other areas where opportunities for upskilling can be found are courses such as Introduction to bus transportation and Introduction to bus scheduling – free CIHT Learn courses – as well as EDI-related training. The emphasis is practical, with members expected to plan, record and reflect on a range of CPD (continuing professional development) activities. Even then, however, Rodoulis points out that bus professionals coming to BCoE can be at a disadvantage due to a lack of technological resources.

“Sometimes they don’t even have a suitable laptop able to carry out some kind of data analysis, or host a GIS (geographic information system),” he laments. “I have seen people instead printing a giant map and drawing on it a bus route with a highlighter, because they don’t have the software to do it in a more informed and effective way. So that’s an issue to start with.”

One area where companies are actively looking to recruit is among women, with the female proportion of bus drivers at just 10%. One bus operator leading the way in addressing that imbalance is Go-Ahead, whose ‘Go-Ahead Women’ drive aims to recruit 1,500 new female bus drivers, offering mentoring and training to that end, with a view to their businesses achieving a 50% gender split by 2035.

Developing management expertise

Meanwhile, on a management level, expertise is equally in demand, and Rodoulis stresses that these are areas that need attention. 

“It’s been a recurring theme over the last few years that there is a huge gap in these commercial skills: contract management, contract monitoring, deciding on business models and operating models. And legal services is another important area,” he states.

“There’s only a handful of legal practices in the UK who specialise in advice related to transport and/or buses.”

The task appears a formidable one. But BCoE is making headway towards an outcome that mirrors its aims to support and develop “a bus sector that is accessible, inclusive and sustainable”.

Sign up to CIHT’s Introduction to bus transportation and Introduction to bus scheduling courses.

Image: bus driver on a London street; credit: Shutterstock.