Quick facts about Rail Projects Victoria: 

Challenge 

Rail Projects Victoria (RPV) is part of the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority (MTIA), delivering the state of Victoria’s largest ever rail infrastructure pipeline with more than $30 billion invested in metropolitan and regional rail projects.

RPV is responsible for planning and developing projects, comprising design, site investigations, stakeholder engagement, planning approvals and procurement through the construction and commissioning phases. They were looking for a learning platform that could provide easy access to training while also helping the learning team to better track and report on learner progress.

Solution 

RPV is leading the deployment and sharing of online training in collaboration with the other major infrastructure initiatives that make up Victoria’s ‘Big Build’ infrastructure program. Before 2019, RPV didn’t have an e-learning solution, making coordination and tracking of compliance training quite a challenge. As e-Learning Advisor Cathy Capogreco noted:

“Not having an LMS in place to keep track of people’s progress on compliance training was a headache and an operational risk we needed to get on top of.”

The shortlisting and selection of an LMS was left to RPV’s HR department. They gathered requirements from the various project teams in the organization and began sourcing potential SaaS solutions. Cathy advised the HR team on the specific aspects of course catalogue management and learner progress tracking, as she explained:

“We needed to make it as easy as possible for learners to have access to training and work in a technology environment they’d be familiar with, so Learn365 was an obvious choice because it sits on SharePoint and is fully integrated to Microsoft 365, which is our core workplace system.”

Other factors that swayed the decision in favor of Learn365 were tracking and reporting on course progress and the ability to manage classroom training alongside e-learning in one place.

Results 

RPV has been using Learn365 for two years and has significantly improved course attendance and completions. Using Learn365 as part of the system called ‘BuildME’, RPV’s onboarding process for new starters has improved significantly. It enables new employees to complete their essential compliance-related training within the first 30 days, often sooner.

RPV shares course content with other infrastructure programs through Learn365 – something not possible before. The productivity of the learning team has also improved. For example, it was necessary to re-key attendance lists in the past, booking rooms was not in one place, and recording sessions were challenging. All these requirements are now addressed in Learn365. Building modules for in-house training modules are also quick and easy, as is access to external content sources.

Future  

RPV expects to add more users as the projects grow. And Cathy hopes they’ll be taking advantage of the fact that Learn365 works within Microsoft Teams. As she says:

“We use Teams a lot – especially since virtual working became the norm. So, the fact Learn365 operates fully within Teams is a major benefit for us, and I can see us adopting this functionality very soon.”

RPV will also be adding more courses and tailoring Power BI reports for managers who need to keep track of their staff’s compliance training activity

About 

Victoria’s Big Build is overseen by the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority (MTIA). MTIA was established on 1 January 2019 to manage major transport projects in Victoria. MTIA comprises five major projects, one of which is Rail Projects Victoria (RPV).