… we recently spoke with Rosie Alexander, ACMS & eDepot Development Manager at Great Western Railway, and Annabelle Marks, eCMS and eDepot Manager at South Western Railway, about how they have been bringing the industry together to share best practice around electronic competence management (eCMS).

Having started the ACMS Cross-TOC working group with a couple of people early in 2022 to explore the need for individuals managing the ACMS platform to openly share ideas and skills across this industry, the group has now grown to include 14 organisations who meet every 3 months and have monthly focus groups.

Rosie Alexander said, “Having been in my current role for over 3 years, I have built up a good knowledge of ACMS, how it works and how it links to the competence standards in GWR.  I felt I wanted to share my experiences and journey with others and learn from others across the industry on how they were using the system and what developments/enhancements they were looking for from the system.”

Annabelle commented, “It was great talking to Rosie.  She was well into her journey when I started out in SWR and having someone to mentor me through the challenges we were facing in the early stages of adopting ACMS, and seeing another organisation who were using it effectively, really helped me in my role.  Elaine Laverick from Avanti is just started out on her journey as they move from a paper-based system to eCMS and I’ve now been able to share my knowledge and experience with her.”