13.11.15
HS2 to recruit over 500 staff in Birmingham over next 18 months – Kirby
Equality, diversity and encouraging younger people to become engineers will be key to the success of HS2, Simon Kirby, CEO at HS2 Ltd, told delegates at RTM’s TransCityRail North event last night.
He said that as an organisation, HS2 Ltd is building momentum and growing, with two people being recruited every day.
“We now have over 1,100 staff from a variety of backgrounds,” said Kirby. “Together we are creating a strong, identifiable culture and we are approaching HS2 in a different way – we want to create a ‘can do’ culture.”
The audience were told that at the company’s recently opened Birmingham HQ, it will recruit over 500 people in the next 18 months.
Discussing the long-term impact of HS2 on the workforce, Kirby said the project will bring “thousands of new people into the rail and infrastructure sector”.
“Britain has brilliant engineers, but we simply don’t have enough of them,” he added. “Every year for the next 10 years, the UK will need approximately 87,000 graduate level engineers. In 2013, we fell 36,000 short of that target. This is why we are opening the new national college for High Speed Rail.”
The new National High Speed Rail College is to be co-located in Birmingham and Doncaster, with its headquarters will located in Birmingham’s city centre Science Park, with another site at Doncaster’s Lakeside Campus.
Recently, the planning application has now been submitted for the new National College for High Speed Rail in Doncaster.