Neil Franklin is a Workforce Planning Advisor for the National Skills Academy for Rail.

He is responsible for forecasting the future skills, numbers and workforce requirements of the rail industry, both in the UK and internationally; providing data, support, advice and guidance so the industry is enabled to deliver the right numbers of people, with the rights skills in the right location at the right time to meet industry needs and government investment commitments. From this, Neil can calculate the economic and social value of new roles within the sector. 

He has undertaken workforce planning and skills modelling for significant infrastructure investments such as HS2, the TransPennine Route Upgrade Programme, East West Rail, Crossrail 2, Heathrow Expansion and the wider rail investment portfolio, including the WISP. He is also working on workforce planning on projects in Australia and Norway. 

In addition, Neil is also a Collaboration Board Director of the National Training Academy for Rail, a joint venture training academy between NSAR and Siemens, and has helped numerous other employers with their own curriculum and training requirements, specialising mainly on developing demand profiles for the business cases.

Neil has been involved in UK rail for nearly thirty years, utilising his engineering and project management background to good effect on a number of multi-disciplinary projects, before moving into change management projects and since 2014, strategic workforce planning activities.