North West

HS2 is already providing huge opportunities for people and businesses across the North West.

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North West

We’ve engaged with 414 businesses of which 91 have delivered work on HS2.

Involving businesses of all sizes *

61 Micro sized businesses, employing
1-10 employees
104 Small sized businesses, employing
11-49 employees
101 Medium sized businesses, employing
51-249 employees
109 Large sized businesses, employing
250+ employees

* Excludes businesses who have not supplied company size data

WSP in Manchester has 147 staff working on HS2, and has taken on additional apprentices to work on the projects

In total, 500 people at WSP offices around the country are working on HS2, including 220 people on the Phase One stations with 39 different specialists on each station.

As part of WSP’s work on HS2, which is to lead the design development of two new HS2 stations – Birmingham Curzon Street and Old Oak Common, it has hired 25 new staff for its transport and infrastructure discipline and 115 new staff for its environmental discipline.

In Manchester, 40 employees including 5 apprentices and 5 graduates are working in Rail, and 44 people including 1 apprentice and 25 graduates are working in Land Services. Plus another 15 in Ecology, 12 in Town Planning and 12 in Ground Risk and Remediation.

WSP has also committed to taking on 12 new apprentices on Old Oak Common station and four on Curzon Street station. The company will also be working with schools along the route through the Class of Your Own charity which gets children into engineering, and is supporting National College for High Speed Rail.

Edward Joynson, apprentice in development infrastructure at WSP Manchester, aged 20, is already working as a junior technician on HS2 in Manchester. He said:

My dad was a builder, as a result I have always been interested in construction and wanted to learn about the way designs are created then constructed. Working on HS2 is very exciting as I know that I am contributing to a significant piece of national infrastructure that will benefit hundreds of thousands of people in the future.