DB Cargo

DB Cargo is a European railway cargo carrier with dozens of offices across the continent and three in the UK. Roles in this country range from engineering and driving through to IT, HR, ground staff and production staff. Apprenticeship roles in the UK include engineering, engineering management, and operational management.

The LCoAT Brief

LCoAT has been appointed as the lead provider for DB Cargo, the largest rail freight provider in the UK, after developing a 4 year Apprenticeship Blueprint to plan their Apprentice Recruitment and Apprenticeship Training as part of their overall workforce development plan.  The apprenticeship college will:

• Deliver Business Improvement Apprenticeship Training as part of DB Cargo’s improvement and efficiency programme
• Management Development through the Team Leading (Level 3) and Departmental Manager (Level 5) Apprenticeship Standards
• Recruitment of Rail Engineering Apprentices, and appointment of a specialist training provider and/or College to deliver these programmes (Level 3 to 6)
• Recruitment and development of Rolling Stock Apprenticeships
• Support DB Cargo’s strategic requirement to be involved in a Rail Freight Train Driver Apprenticeship Standard
• Deliver head office Apprenticeship Standards across Human Resources, Customer Services and Sales.

We currently have nearly 100 staff in training, and have a well developed partnership to review the impact of the Apprenticeship Training, which is delivering great feedback and meeting their objectives.

Our Approach

We always start by asking a client a simple question:

“What is it that you want your staff to be able to do at the end of the apprenticeship that they can’t do now?”

Once we’d clearly understood Labour’s key objectives we were able to structure a development programme that would enable them to meet their objectives through an apprenticeship scheme.

Here’s what we did next:

• provided a free ‘levy opportunities’ consultancy service 
• researched DBs existing Learning & Development (L&D) programmes
• outcome matched L&D objectives to existing apprenticeship standards
• profiled start numbers required to fully recovery levied funds
• identified opportunities to increase staff participation numbers using co-funding
• developed bespoke curriculum content for each course
• resourced a programme of masterclasses and technical works
• ran a series of webinars to introduce the course to participants and line managers

The resulting apprenticeships started in August 2017.

The Apprenticeship Programme

The Apprenticeship College tailor made a Business Improvement Techniques apprenticeship specifically for the DB Cargo. As with all of our apprenticeships, the course content is specifically written to meet DB’s objectives.  See the details here:

• Business Improvement Techniques