Operational planning specialist: Making competent decisions.
Train crew, shunters and cleaners count on you to assign and plan their work precisely. You master disruption and major events, keep calm and ensure optimal customer solutions are provided.
I am knowledgeable, passionate and proud of what I do – I achieve great things and routinely resolve any incidents
DanielCamenisch
Operational planning specialist, talented and successful bowler and creator of 3D wooden board games.
You take on responsible and varied tasks in the Traffic Control Centre, and in Planning, Management and Allocation of staff and rolling stock. By adapting plans to unforeseen occurrences and major events, you ensure that operations run smoothly. You develop solutions and ensure customer information. And you focus on our customers so that they can get to their destination safely and on time.
Your four areas of work.
Your work takes place in four different locations where you carry out different jobs, making your working days extremely varied:
In Planning, you create annual shift plans for the shunters, locomotive crew, customer-facing staff and train cleaning teams.
You adapt staff shift plans and rolling stock schedules for planned events or engineering work in Management.
In Allocation, you create the work, holiday and Friday shift schedules for train crew and your colleagues who work in shunting and in cleaning.
The Traffic Control Center monitors railway operations 24 hours a day. Your role is to react to abnormal operations immediately, take decisions and inform customers in a professional manner.
Unique skills.
As an operational planning specialist, you make decisions confidently and independently. You take responsibility for yourself and for your colleagues. In your work, you bear in mind our customers, your team and everything as a whole. You communicate openly and transparently and have the empathy required to give a positive turn to conflicts and negotiations.
The further training programme to become an operational planning specialist starts once a year in German-speaking Switzerland:
Start of training on 1 September 2021 with Bern as your future place of work.
Start of training on 1 September 2021 with Zurich as your future place of work.
The training as an operational planning specialist lasts ten months and takes place in German-speaking Switzerland. During training, you are employed by SBB and are remunerated.
In your first month, you will be taught important basic knowledge and rail know-how. You conclude this module with a theory test.
Following this, you spend nine months rotating between four different domains: Planning, Management, Allocation and the Traffic Control Center. In the course of these nine months, you learn basic work procedures and how things connect hands-on, and you apply this knowledge. You finish your second training programme with a test of your theoretical and practical skills. Following an individual consolidation phase, you are ready to work as an operational planning specialist.
For budding operational planning specialists, joined-up and analytical thinking is important. Your strengths must also include working towards objectives and teamwork.
You will also meet the following requirements:
You have completed a 3-year apprenticeship or federal academic baccalaureate and have at least 3 years of professional experience.
Your joined-up analytical thinking lets you find the right answers to complex tasks.
You like to make decisions independently and take responsibility for yourself and for other colleagues.
As a team player, you are an open communicator and you have the empathy required to carry out negotiations in a positive atmosphere.
You have the mental resilience necessary for this demanding task and are happy to work irregular hours (7x24h).
You have full professional proficiency in the language spoken at your workplace and have knowledge of a second national language.
If you fulfil the requirements, you will sit a video interview before the personal job interview. The application process includes a personality and cognitive test.
As an operational planning specialist, you have various opportunities for personal development. While following a career path with a given field, you can also pursue a change of place of work.
We support and promote the personal work-life balance of our employees. After training, you have the opportunity to work part-time.
As an operational planning specialist, you work office hours, office hours combined with weekends or as part of a 24-hour shift operation.
Remuneration system.
We pay competitive salaries. Our remuneration system takes into account the requirements for the position, rewards individual performance and creates transparency. We recently became the first company to receive the ‘Excellence in Fair Compensation’ label for our exceptionally fair remuneration system.
Your salary during training.
Your gross monthly salary including the thirteen month's pay depends on age, experience and location. The charts show the salary including the regional supplement.
Extra pay.
The total of the allowances varies depending on the shift plan (Hourly rate for night work: CHF 6 / hourly Sunday rate: CHF 16)
Child benefit: CHF 320 for the first child (CHF 205 for each additional child) and other SBB benefits
Individual salaries will be fixed as part of the employment contract following our remuneration system which forms part of the collective agreement.
Special offers for SBB employees.
Our employees enjoy attractive discounts from companies throughout Switzerland. These include insurance policies, language courses and electronic devices.
GA Travelcard.
Our employees receive a 2nd class GA Travelcard – the eligibility criteria are a 50-per cent level of employment and a term of employment of over one year. Our staff also benefit from discounted rail journeys abroad.
