Episode Eleven: Safe at Heart
How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line.
With any project, health and safety plays an important role. From working at height to operating heavy machinery, there is always a risk towards the health and wellbeing of workers, and possibly the public.
How do workers identify and mitigate hazards? How do they make use of decades of progress in health and safety? And how do they build upon that knowledge to help improve industry best practice and beyond?
This episode of How to build a railway, ‘Safe at Heart’, explores why nothing on this project is more important than the health, safety and wellbeing of everyone working on HS2.
Featuring:
- Emma Head – HS2 Technical Services Delivery Director
- Fiona King – HS2 Head of Occupational Health and Wellbeing
- Dame Judith Hackitt – HS2 Non-Executive Director
- Ben Bryant – Align TBM Engineer
- Sasan Ghavami – BBV Deputy Project Director SL7
Emma outlines HS2’s Health and Safety Strategy along with how the organisation works with its supply chain to drive the performance of Health and Safety.
Fiona dives into the importance of Occupational Health and viewing the long-term risks to individuals that may only become present 20+ years later. She also talks through “Health by Design”. An approach of identifying and mitigating risks to health and wellbeing before construction even starts.
Dame Judith discusses the learning from other projects when it comes to health and safety along with having a project this scale to use as an opportunity to set new standards for the industry.
Ben explains the use of robotics on TBM “Cecilia”, and how it benefits the workers’ health and safety by removing risks of working from height and exposure to materials in the ground being excavated.
Sasan describes the Marston Box push and how actions taken not only benefited health and safety for the workforce, but also the local community.
Episode Eleven: Safe at Heart (transcript)
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Episode transcript
This is a transcript of episode eleven of HS2’s How to build a railway podcast, first published on 6 June 2023.
Fran Scott
I’m Fran Scott and this is How to Build a Railway.
It is hard to really appreciate the true size of the HS2 project. It is a mammoth undertaking. Right now, it is the largest infrastructure project in the whole of Europe, and it is one of the largest ever undertaken in the UK.
With this great size comes great responsibility, as construction is not without its risks and the bigger the project, the more potential there is for something to go wrong. At every point in its design and construction, through to its maintenance and operations, HS2 will have the potential to impact on workers’, and the public’s, health and wellbeing.
In this episode we are going to explore how HS2 is taking up this challenge. How the engineers of the project work to identify and mitigate hazards, making use of decades of progress in health and safety within the construction industry, while also building upon that knowledge and helping improve best practice on HS2 and beyond.
1.27
Emma Head
HS2 is a once in a generational project, the scale of which is unprecedented. If I draw comparisons just for a moment with Thames Tideway. Each month they would deliver 600,000 people hours. On HS2 we’ve seen our workforce work 60 million hours in the last 12 months. And that’s only in the construction of phase one.
Fran Scott
That was Emma Head. Emma is HS2’s Technical Services Delivery Director, which encompasses the environment, and health and safety. We heard from her in episode 10, as we looked at how HS2 is cutting carbon emissions from its projects.
A project the size and duration of HS2, creates an ever-changing set of risks.
2.15
Emma Head
As we shift from earthworks to more and more works out of the ground, we will start to focus on structures. And that will see the risk profile move to working at height. And we will need to respond to that by being clear about how we’re going to manage the risks.
Fran Scott
Dame Judith Hackitt is one of the UK’s leading experts on health and safety. A chemical engineer by training, she was chair of the Health and Safety Commission from 2007 to 2009, and of the Health and Safety Executive from 2008 to 2015. In the wake of the Grenfell fire, she was commissioned to write a report on building and fire safety regulations. All of the report’s recommendations were accepted by the UK government.
Today, Dame Judith is a non-executive director on HS2’s board.
3.08
Dame Judith Hackitt
The challenges facing HS2 are, are not that different from many other infrastructure projects. But what makes HS2 so different is the sheer scale of things. The fact that we’re doing it in so many different locations at the same time, makes the learning that we can pick up from other projects, always has to be thought about in terms of “So how does that apply to a project on this scale with this many locations, and this many people.”
There are advantages to having something on this scale, because you have many different delivery partners involved. You have not just large scale tier one contractors, but you also have a whole supply chain of people out there. So the opportunity to influence and change the thinking about safety, with such a large part of the construction sector is enormous.
Fran Scott
The risks inherent in any major infrastructure programme are heightened during the peak construction phase. This was tragically brought home to everyone involved with HS2 when a supply chain worker died following an industrial incident at an HS2 site in the West Midlands in April 2023. A The cause of the incident is being fully investigated.
Such tragedies are a very stark reminder of why safety is and must continue to be at the heart of everything HS2 does, with nearly 30,000 people now working on the programme.
HS2 is developing new technological solutions and improved processes to manage the risks involved with construction. The organisation and its supply chain continues to share lessons learnt. In addition, both continue to champion new and safer techniques, such as using robotics to produce tunnel segments for the Tunnel Boring Machines.
We looked at how a TBM works in Episode 6 of the series. The key thing to remember here is that a TBM builds a concrete ring as it goes, which supports the ground above. This is made up of curved segments, which are carried from the back of the TBM to the working area at the front, using a ‘segment crane’. This is a trolley-mounted crane, with a vacuum lifter attached: like the vacuum grips used by glaziers, these suction onto the surface of the segment, allowing it to be lifted safely, without causing any damage.
The segments are cast on site, at a dedicated pre-casting factory on the surface. The segments are stacked into sets, using wooden spacers. These spacers allow clamps to be used at the factory, to grip onto the edges of the segment. They also stop the concrete surfaces crunching against each other.
The stacked segments are carried from the pre-cast factory to the TBM using a ‘multi-service vehicle’ or MSV. This is Ben Bryant, a TBM engineer with Bouygues, part of the Align JV.
Align JV are using two tunnel boring machines under the Chilterns to dig two 16 kilometre long tunnels, each 10m in diameter.
7.08
Ben Bryant
We’re currently nine kilometres in from surface. So they’re transported onto the TBM using a multi service vehicle, which I’ll call an MSV for ease. So they’re brought in one ring at a time on the back of the MSV in two stacks. The stack of segments will then be moved forward through the TBM and used to build the ring. So once they arrive on the TBM on the back of the MSV, they’re lifted off the MSV using quick unloaders, which is just a hydraulic lifting system. Basically, once they’re lifted, the MSV can leave the TBM. We’ll then use a segment crane, which uses a vacuum suction, to pick up one segment at a time, transfer them from the quick unloaders onto a segment feeder, which is basically a conveyor and that will carry those segments forwards to the front of the TBM, ready for building.
Fran Scott
The risk comes as the wooden spacers are removed from the surface of each ring segment, before it can be lifted.
8.09
Ben Bryant
Traditionally, these wooden spacers would be moved by hand. And depending on the TBM gantry design, you might be able to access some of them from the walkways. But generally speaking, it will involve someone climbing onto the top of the segment stack, picking up these timbers by hand and passing them to someone stood on the gantry. In the case of this site, these timber spacers, they weigh about 30 kilos each, two per segment. So it’s a lot of manual handling. So for us to reduce manual handling working at height, we’ve developed a robot system to do it for us.
Fran Scott
There are real risks to the health and wellbeing of workers handling the spacers – HS2 and its supply chain is doing everything they can to reduce that risk.
8.51
Ben Bryant
The top of the segment stack, when it’s a full stack, is probably pushing three metres above the invert level of the tunnel. So it would be a long fall, if you were to fall off the segment stack.
You’ve also got the fact that the segments are curved. And if it’s raining outside, they’re going to be wet. So you’ll stand on top of them, you’ve got the risk of slipping over on top of the segments. Then you’ve got the handling of the timbers, which admittedly on some projects are lighter weight, but they’re always generally heavy and awkward. You’ve got the handling of that, musculoskeletal issues, crushing your hands. And also in the same area, we have the segment crane moving, so if for whatever reason, there’s someone on top of the segments, and the segment crane operator moves back, you have the risk there of people plant interface, and any injuries that might come of that.
Fran Scott
And, just because a worker gets through their shift without slipping off of the segment stack, that doesn’t mean they’re not building up damage to their body that may diminish their long term health.
9.54
Ben Bryant
Musculoskeletal issues, I’d say, would be, would be the big issue for the long term works, just repetitive picking up heavy loads. And it’s not always the easiest place to work. You might be working in confined spaces, bent over, twisting at awkward angles. So there’s lots of sort of instances where it could accumulate over time into more of an issue.
Fran Scott
Align’s solution was to install a robot arm, similar to those used in car factories, on the TBM. This extends down from the second floor of the TBM, and picks up the spacers.
10.35
Ben Bryant
The robot arm is—again—mounted on a gantry. And so it’s rolled backwards and forwards as we need it. It’s a six axis robot very similar to what you’d see on a car production line. So we’ve mounted this within the backup gantry, where the segments are put on the quick unloaders. And we use this in conjunction with our segment crane to unload the timbers from the top of the segments,
We’ll remove the first segment. And underneath that first segment, there’s two timbers. So as soon as that first segment is picked up, the segment crane operator will activate the robot, all the doors are locked and all the safety things are activated at this point, they can continue working away with that first segment, the robot will come forwards, and it will rely on sensors built into the quick unloaders and into the robot head to determine the position of the segment and the timbers. It will then dip the tool head down on the robot. And it will push the two timbers that are on the segments together. And then it can open up its jaws, close around it using a pneumatic system, to clamp onto the timbers. And then it will pick them up, drive back a bit down the gantry and it will deposit them in an unloading area.
Fran Scott
The use of the robot arm removes a regular risk from TBM operations. Over the course of the project, Align will install something like 8,000 rings in total. Each ring will be made up of multiple segments, and each segment separated by two wooden spacers. Over the course of the project, someone would have had to climb up onto the wet, curved, surface, bend to pick the spacers, twist to pass them to a colleague, and then get of the segments, ready for the crane to pick the next one up.
That’s tens of thousands of movements, each of which could see someone fall and dash their skull on the floor of the tunnel, or twist badly and cause themselves long term musculoskeletal damage. Each of those tens of thousands of risky operations have now been eliminated.
But a tunnel is not a car factory. Anyone who has worked in, or walked around, a modern vehicle factory will know that these are orderly and immaculate spaces. Trip and collision risks are identified and removed. Robots can perform precise movements, on parts that are always in the same position.
13.08
Ben Bryant
With any of these robots, there is a very regimented path that it tends to follow. But for us, we’ve had to factor in the fact that the segment stacks and the timbers aren’t always in exactly the same place each time, as you might expect, say, a car door to be on a production line. So the processes that it follows, as I say, are very regimented and are pre programmed. But we have sensors that measure the segment position, and there’s tolerances factored into the robot, where it can adapt based on where the segments and the timbers are. So we’ll always have the bottom of the stack in the same place. And it knows the thickness of the segments and the thickness of the spacers. So it knows within a couple of mill, where the segment should be and then we’ve got a suspension system in the head, which will accommodate any discrepancy in that position.
Fran Scott
The TBM is a much more complex and variable environment than a factory. And it is not designed for sensitive equipment and sensors.
14.08
Ben Bryant
We’re working in a relatively confined space, in an environment that’s generally more hostile than most production lines. So you can have high temperatures, lots of dust, water, slurry grout, there’s lots of things there that can interfere with quite a finely tuned robot. So the team that developed it had to map the gantry to… and did a 3d map of it, to know exactly where every beam column and wall were. And then that’s factored into the robot design.
So we’ve had to obviously give it enough movements that it can avoid all of these clashes, that it can turn around inside the gantry without hitting anything. And then they’ve had to factor in, as we said, the position of the segments, the position of the timbers, and all the different sensors that we need to have in place to make sure that we know exactly where everything is.
This robot doesn’t have a sort of mind of its own. It’s got a very pre programmed route. So if there’s anything there that there shouldn’t be, it doesn’t know. And it will hit it. So we’ve had to go through a lot of processes to make sure that it can’t hurt itself or anyone else.
Fran Scott
Align had to fine tune the robot’s movements at the start of the project. But it was soon working at the same rhythm as the rest of the TBM, handling the spacers without risk, and without delay to tunnelling operations. But Ben can see ways it could be improved further.
15.36
Ben Bryant
I think the technology is there already, it can only be improved by other modern means. I’d say 3d scanning of areas is probably one of the modern things that we can use to speed up the process. Rather than having to define the boundaries of the robot, we can just 3d scan the area and say, “right, there’s your working area, don’t hit anything”.
Fran Scott
Where HS2 crosses the M42, northeast of Birmingham, the project had originally planned to build a bridge in-situ. This would have required road closures for two years, disrupting traffic in the wider area and introducing risks to both the workers and the public.
Joint venture contractor Balfour Beatty Vinci proposed an alternative method: the entire structure would be built off site, in discrete steps, and then slid into place. Effectively relocating the most high risk elements of the project to a more protected and controlled site.
But to make it possible, they would need some clever engineering.
Sasan Ghanami worked on the Marston bridge project and is now deputy project director for sub lot 7, the 50 mile stretch of the railway close to Birmingham and linking to the West Coast Main Line.
Work started on the project by excavating an area the size of the main bridge section, down to a depth of four metres, to form a base for construction. The concrete platform, which would form the surface of the structure, was built on top.
17.17
Sasan Ghanami
So everything for the structure is started from this platform going upwards. So once we’ve got that, as the foundation constructed, then the structure is started building up in stages. First, we started the base foundation, then we started the three walls, and then we put the deck on the top.
Fran Scott
The platform is designed to create a frictionless surface, allowing it to slide along the ground when construction is completed.
17.55
Sasan Ghanami
You’ve got a platform, concrete platform, and then you build the box on top of that. Within the base foundation of the structure, there is a certain amount of plumbing that’s taking place within this base. The purpose of these tubes are for injecting bentonite to and inside of the base, which then gets spread as the box goes forward to form a, sort of a slip membrane. Before we cast the base of the construction on the platform, we applied a grease and a polythene layer. So that the two concrete faces are all separated.
Fran Scott
Bentonite will be pumped through the pipes to form a slide membrane
The entire box structure weighed over 12,000 tonnes and measured 96m long. The box would then be pulled into place using strand jacks. These work in a way similar to someone climbing up a rope. Picture a climber gripping a rope with their hands, pulling their legs up, and then, with the rope between their feet, reaching with their hands further up the rope.
19.24
Sasan Ghanami
There [were] was nine jacks fitted at the back of the box structure. There was three on one corner, three on a middle and three on the other corner. The troughs was fixed at the beginning of the push slab, into the concreted slab in the ground. And it was basically came through the trough and through the jacks and, and laying on the back into the another anchor at the at the back of the structure.
Fran Scott
This approach meant that, rather than closing the motorway for two years, only two short closures were needed: one came in December 2021, for a week, as the site was prepared for the move; the second came in December 2022, when the bridge was slid into place over another one week period. Both jobs were completed ahead of schedule.
The off-site approach removed risks to road users, and avoided any potential delays to emergency response vehicles required in the wider community.
But it also meant that work on site could be conducted more safely. Construction would be conducted in discrete steps, with minimal plant movements.
20.47
Sasan Ghanami
In order to construct this, we deployed two tower cranes in order to do the lifting. And basically, doing anything within the perimeter of the workforce ie the lifting of the reinforcements in place, lifting the form works in place for them, so that they could reduce the movement around the structure, that decreased the movement of the plant around the box.
By working with the static tower cranes in place, we reduce the use of the mobile crane to roughly about 20%
Fran Scott
The tower cranes were used alongside concrete pumps. These were supplied by a concrete batching plant close to the construction site. This offered a quick turnaround for lorries, and avoided them needing to use public roads.
21.47
Sasan Ghanami
The material, external material, which was coming from off site was predominantly steel, and, and the accessories and this some of the small tools, but that was much, much reduced.
Fran Scott
Designing the structure in this way allowed work to take place in a much more controlled fashion. Rather than multiple stages happening at once, one stage could be completed, before the next started.
22.15
Sasan Ghanami
Because of the staging, we had only one access and one egress. So we control the ins and outs of the, to the area far better in terms of plant, in terms of visitors, in terms of operatives, because everybody had to go through one gate. And there was a gate person, that who briefed everybody about the activity was taking place, and what they need to do in case of any incidents.
The risks were day-by-day identified. We had a board at the gate, identified what risks there are on particular… that particular day, and who’s responsible for managing that risk. And how we were managing it. You know, in terms of PPE, we were telling people, Well, today’s a noisy operation, so you gotta wear your, you know, the ear protection. Today, there is a lifting, so you don’t need to go in that area. So it was a far better defined work space management
Fran Scott
The Marston Box Push was a first of its kind in the UK. It involved a radical reworking of traditional construction methods, removing risks in and around the site.
Other initiatives like the TBM Robotic Arm we heard about from Ben earlier on, are much more focussed, reducing risk from a specific operation. Both form part of an approach called “health by design”. The idea is to identify risks to occupational health and wellbeing, before construction even starts.
Fiona King is head of occupational health and wellbeing at HS2. She leads the implementation of this approach.
24.03
Fiona King
One of the most exciting things about this project—and probably what really attracted me—was that we’re actually trying to really emphasise the importance of looking at health from the very early stages of design, right through construction, and into all the other maintenance, all the other sectors. But really, from the very onset, we’re thinking about health. So we’re trying to, we used to say we’re treating health like safety. But really what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to raise the profile of occupational health, so people understand the difference between occupational ill health and accidents.
The terminology is health by design. So what you’re looking at is trying to eliminate or mitigate health risks at very early stages. Now, it’s been done on Crossrail, where we’ve looked where we’ve used health by design, but what we tried to do is take it a step further on this programme. And what we try to do with, you know, our instructions to our contractors probably don’t really like them, but to really get occupational health specialists. So that could be anyone—from an occupational hygienist to an occupational health nurse, ergonomist, organisation psychology—to really understand the health impacts of a particular design, and how can we really think about the ill effects potentially for health as a construction stage, at a maintenance stage and even the demolition stage so really looking at it through the lifecycle.
Fran Scott
The innovations at Marston Box and in the Tunnel Boring Machine address safety concerns, like the potential for falls. They also address occupational health, by reducing the harm caused by musculoskeletal damage. But many risks to occupational health can make themselves known only decades later.
26.00
Fiona King 02:16
It can take a long time for ill—particularly occupational—ill health to develop. So we might not see it for maybe 10 years, it could be 15, it could be even 20 years. And actually, we might have new materials now, that we won’t even know the impact of them until later on. So it’s, what we refer to, it’s latent, it takes a long time to see if there’s going to be any ill effects from it.
You really will see the impact of decisions we make far later on and that’s the bit where, hopefully, we’ll be all set in 20, 25 years thinking, “Yeah, we got that decision, right, we have eliminated harm”, because we weren’t able to do that in previous, you know, I suppose in previous big construction, infrastructure projects, years and years ago, because the knowledge wasn’t there.
Fran Scott
There can be long term risks to occupational health on a construction site, that are far less obvious and immediate than the risks of accidents. But they can have devastating effects on workers’ lives.
27.06
Fiona King
People underestimate, and probably don’t see even, the impact of an occupational illness, you know, and I’m thinking of things like, skin conditions like dermatitis, like hand arm vibration, where, you know, you mightn’t be able to do up the buttons on your, you know, your shirt or your trousers or tie your shoelaces.
Fran Scott
HS2’s occupational health and wellbeing team get out on site and help identify materials and processes that may cause long term harm.
27.41
Fiona King
What we’ve done a little bit different, I think, to other projects, some may argue, but I think it’s slightly different, is that we’ve ensured that every contractor has occupational health teams that are on that are on site that are really looking at a health management plan, and to really understand what are the health risks to those work areas, not to the rest of the project, but to those particular work areas.
And, you know, we have to support our designers to help them, you know, make that decision as well help them understand the health risk, because they’re not going to see the health risks today, because they’re not going to happen for a few years potentially to come.
We’re trying to develop a tool that will help a designer and, you know, help with that decision making. And that’s something that’s in development at the moment.
Fran Scott
Fiona’s team works with the project’s designers and contractors to identify long term threats to health and wellbeing. And they can help individual workers manage their own health and wellbeing.
28.48
Fiona King
I think in some ways, those that are coming into the construction area now are more, they’re more concerned about their health and being well.
One of the things we want to make sure in the project is people are getting access to good occupational health advice. So that, you know, they are having those, sort of, health surveillance, are having those fitness to work medicals. So that, you know, we can understand whether people’s health is improving or not.
Fran Scott
One focus of this work has been on fatigue. It can be a cause of accidents and is detrimental to workers’ overall wellbeing.
29.27
Fiona King
We’re doing quite a bit of research around fatigue and the impact of fatigue on workforce.
And fatigue is quite a difficult one, because everyone’s fatigue levels will be different, but we can manage it to the sense that people then can go and, you know, have a… not be fatigued when they leave work. And, you know, can work effectively when they’re at work.
So we’ve got a number of those projects happening, a number of research happening at the moment that’s looking at it, and looking at it more in particular in the construction industry.
A lot of the research has been done in kind of more aviation, oil and gas and stuff like that. So we’re specifically looking at it now in terms of construction, and what does it mean for a construction worker, so that we can learn and share and you know, do a bit more in that space.
Fran Scott
Construction is a sector dominated by temporary, contract, work. This makes collecting data on long term occupational health a challenge. While HS2 can’t track the health of individual workers throughout their careers, the scope and duration of the project does allow a mass of data to be collected.
30.36
Fiona King
There’s a few things that we are doing on the programme at the moment that’s helping us capture how well we are managing our health risks.
We collect a lot of data as well in health, and sometimes that data can sit there and it’s, “How do we best use that to inform future, future parts of our own programme, and actually influence maybe some of those industry standards, and even some of our legislation of standards as well”
Fran Scott
As the programme expands and evolves, health and safety risks will vary. Our resolve to put health and safety at the heart of HS2 remains constant.
31.20
Emma Head
We must not be complacent, we must remain super focused on health and safety management, every day, to protect all those that work on HS2.
Fran Scott
As well as bringing her formidable expertise to the board, Dame Judith and the other non-executives ensure that its executives are meeting their commitments.
31.41
Dame Judith Hackitt
As a board, it is our role to ensure that the executive are leading safety in a way that we believe is appropriate. So it’s really important that we assure ourselves that they are doing exactly that, and also that they’re doing it in the right way. So that they are pulling through, if you will, those behaviours that we want to see, from that huge number of people who are working on project.
Fran Scott
The non-executives can only be sure that the executives—and the organisation as a whole—are meeting their aspirations, if their performance can be measured.
32.26
Dame Judith Hackitt
Our health and safety performance index, as we call it, in essence, at the end of the day, distils itself down to one number, which is pretty impenetrable to most people. But it is a way of benchmarking ourselves against other projects that have gone before. But what sits beneath that are a whole series of very specific measures about, ‘How well do we respond?’ ‘How are we assuring ourselves that we have good supervision out there, that are leading on safety?’, all of those things are that we measure to make up that performance index.
Fran Scott
That number is used day-to-day to ensure operations remain safe. But it also allows HS2 to measure its overall performance, and report on this publicly.
33.17
Dame Judith Hackitt
Other projects, can compare and can learn from us and the two things are different. This is not a competition. And I think we have to remember that in the health and safety space, particularly, this is not about being triumphant about how good we are. It is actually about ensuring that all of the really good things that we do to move on in construction and become even safer in everything that we do, don’t get lost, and that future projects don’t have to start from somewhere back from that and have to learn those lessons for themselves.
The fact that we have chosen at this point to produce a health and safety report on our first part of this journey—and to bring all of that together—the numbers actually form a very small part of that report. What the report is really about is all of the lessons that we’ve learned, the good practices that we’ve put in place, and the things that we’re trying to do, because we want to anchor that at this point, and get it out to people.
Fran Scott
Emma Head believes that this open and transparent approach to sharing lessons has long-term benefits for the wider industry and can also help to raise standards over time.
34.33
Emma Head
We ultimately want to create a culture where everybody cares about the health and safety of the workforce, and that will be a legacy well beyond the delivery of HS2.
Fran Scott
Dame Judith says that the sheer scale of HS2 will allow it to have a lasting impact on Health and Safety, beyond the project.
34.41
Dame Judith Hackitt
I think that is one of the biggest opportunities we have when we talk about setting new standards, and setting even better standards that can be achieved on previous ins, infrastructure projects. For me, that’s what it’s all about the extent of that reach, and our ability to change the mindset and the behaviours of people who will then go on to work on other projects far and wide, with a very different approach to safety for themselves, and also for the other people that they work with.
Fran Scott
Next time on How to Build a Railway…
Ever since HS2 was announced, the company has been planning not just how they would build a railway but what kind of legacy HS2 wanted and how they would deliver it. Very early on in the project’s development, the legacy team decided on one of their major focuses. Jobs and skills.
Natalie Penrose
So both in terms of the infrastructure industry and the rail industry, it’s an ageing workforce. It is a problem, an industry with a lack of diversity, and we’re trying to change that. And then the scale and size of HS2—you know, we’re looking to get up to a workforce of 34,000 at peak—means that we can really make an industry step change and we can be a game changer for the industry in general.
We’re aiming to have 2000 apprentices over the life of the project. And I think it’s fair to say we’re smashing that target,
Fran Scott
It’s not only about creating jobs and skills. Megaprojects like HS2 also need to consider their economic legacy.
Cathy Elliott
We’ve funded a huge variety of projects over the years and we’re literally in hundreds now. Well over 230 projects were funded along the phase one line of route.
Jonathan Bretherton
If you fast forward 30 years there will be over 7 million square feet of commercial development that doesn’t currently exist or it’s just just in the early days of being developed. There’ll be over 8000 new homes. There’ll be on current value over 6 billion pounds per annum extra going into the West Midlands economy and there will be 10s of 1000s of new jobs.
Dyan Crowther
I mean, railways are expensive to build, period. So if you’re going to invest in a railway, you’ve got to go “Right, it’s going to cost a lot of money. But there are going to be long term benefits.”
Fran Scott
Your host has been me Fran Scott
Thanks to our guests Emma Head, Dame Judith Hackitt, Ben Bryant, Sasan Ghanami and Fiona King.
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