Interviews

HS2: The innovation and skills challenge

HS2 Ltd commercial director, Beth West, on why the project needs to do things differently.

HS2 will be one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Europe. Fifteen years of construction, a £55.7bn investment, nine major new railway stations and more than 350 miles of new track, bridges, viaducts and tunnels, as well as the next generation of high-speed trains. 

For the rail and construction industry, it’s a massive opportunity. For HS2 Ltd, it’s a huge challenge to mobilise the supply chain on an unprecedented scale to deliver the design and construction, as well as the long-term maintenance and operation. 

At the peak of construction, in the mid-2020s, we expect more than 24,000 people to be working on the project, either on site along the route, or across the UK-wide supply chain. 

Closing the skills gap 

To hit those sorts of numbers we, as an industry, need to recruit and train a lot more people. Every year the UK needs 87,000 graduate engineers, yet in 2013 only 51,000 engineers graduated from British universities and higher education institutions. Added to that, 20% of UK rail engineers are expected to retire over the next 10 years. 

That’s why it’s essential that we move to close the skills gap in order to capitalise on the investment in HS2 and the rest of the national rail network. HS2 will create plenty of jobs, but we need to work together with the government and the industry to provide the people. 

Closing the gap is about numbers, but also crucially about developing higher level skills, and experience in next-generation technologies, like BIM and digital signalling, that will soon be commonplace across the network.

Indeed, the demand for higher level skills is striking. We estimate that 50% of the HS2 workforce will require skills at, or above, Level 3 (A-Level equivalent) yet 80% of the current UK construction workforce typically only train to Level 2. 

National college 

That’s where the new National College for High Speed Rail comes in. Based in twin campuses in Birmingham and Doncaster, the college was established by government to train the next generation of high-speed rail engineers and provide training and support for the existing workforce across the national rail network. 

Due to open in 2017, the college will offer a Higher Technical Diploma as well as short courses in areas such as rail operations, management, commercial awareness, rail systems, asset management, engineering principles and workforce safety and welfare. Full-time and part-time study will be available, with a mix of classroom, virtual learning and work placements. 

The thinking behind the college is simple. It’s all about raising the profile of rail engineering as a profession and providing students, companies, and especially SMEs, the chance to build the high-level skills required for the 21st century rail network. 

That’s important because, even without HS2, the scale of UK rail investment is immense. Current Network Rail plans predict £38bn worth of spending between 2014 and 2019, plus, of course, the ongoing £14.8bn investment in London’s Crossrail. All of this will create demand for thousands of highly skilled people. 

Supply chain changes 

But to deliver that investment, we also need to change the way the whole supply chain works, and crucially how it thinks. 

Just as firms like Uber and AirBnB have transformed the way the taxi and hospitality industries work, I want to find the companies who will pioneer innovative new ways to drive cost out of the rail supply chain, while sharing our commitment to quality, safety and long-term value. 

These ‘disrupter’ firms have been hugely successful in other areas – creating business models that previously simply did not exist, and shaking up the industry in the process. Most of them were SMEs that came out of nowhere, challenging established ways of doing things. The question is, who and what will do the same for the rail industry? 

HS2 is the perfect opportunity for new thinking. With the exception of HS1, we simply haven’t built new rail in any great quantity in the country for over 100 years. That’s why it’s vital that we get the brightest and best new thinking, in terms of training people through the National College for High Speed Rail and apprenticeships, and secure innovative new ways of doing things through our supply chain. 

It’s important because HS2 has the potential to be much more than just a railway. If we take advantage of the opportunity, HS2 will be a catalyst for change across the transport and engineering sector, building British skills and expertise, building careers and transforming the image of the industry, as well as helping to rebalance the national economy.

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