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Crossrail beats apprentice target to lead the industry skills revolution

Achieving 400 apprentices shows progress but much work still to do, Crossrail chairman Terry Morgan tell NSARE anual conference.

With over three years to go before completion, the £15bn Crossrail project has beaten its self-imposed target for employing apprentices setting the benchmark for future rail projects.

According to Crossrail chairman Terry Morgan, who also chairs both the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering and the newly launched National College for High Speed Rail, this success is a crucial step in transforming the industry skill base.

 “You must look to yourselves first – ask what are you doing to promote the value of railway engineering careers.” Terry Morgan

“We set ourselves a goal of a achieving 400 apprentices on the project – we have now beaten that and we are revising our targets up,” said Morgan addressing the NSARE annual conference in London last week.

“The question is: are we good enough to match the current expectation of us?” he added with reference to the project’s on-going challenges. “We are not there yet – no yet providing the confidence that, as we transform a construction project to a railway systems project, we can deliver a railway that is the pride of all who built it.”

Morgan highlighted the need for a continuing pipeline of work in the rail industry to provide the vital flow of jobs that must follow training. 

He also commended the High Speed 2 project which he said had started to think about how the address the skills issue much earlier that any major project in the past.  

“The High Speed Rail training college has targeted 2000 apprentices,” he said. “You must look to yourselves first – ask what are you doing to promote the value of railway engineering careers.”

“We need to stimulate the skills now ahead of High Speed 2 and all the other great rail projects that are planned,” Gil Howarth.

NSARE founder Gil Howarth also urged conference delegates, which included senior representatives from clients, consultants and contractors from across the industry, to embrace the challenge of revitalising skills in the expanding rail industry .

“We need to stimulate the skills now ahead of High Speed 2 and all the other great rail projects that are planned,” he said pointing out that the challenge was to shift rail engineering from its perception as the least attract sector in already unattractive engineering careers.

The vital need for action to change this perception and boost the skills across the rail industry was also flagged by Stephen Tetlow, chief executive of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers who highlighted the increasingly competitive environment for eh best young people.

“The supply of skills is the greatest impediment to growth in the UK,” he said pointing out that over the next five years with some £25bn to be spent in rail the industry needed to find 17,500 new people - 23% of the UK’s current technical base.

“Today is a call to arms and a wake-up call for action,” he added.

If you would like to contact Antony Oliver about this, or any other story, please email antony.oliver@infrastructure-intelligence.com.