Engineering news
The first details about contracts worth more than £12bn for HS2 have been announced, while the chief executive of the organisation in charge of delivering the high speed rail line warned of a skills shortage on the project.
HS2 is expected to create up to 40,000 jobs during the first phase of construction between Birmingham and London. Enabling work is planned to begin in 2016, with construction starting in 2017 and complete by 2026. The second phase, a Y-shaped line from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds is due to be finished by 2032.
Work on HS2 cannot start until Royal Assent on a Bill to build and operate phase one of the project is granted, which is expected by December 2016.
Chief executive of HS2, Simon Kirby, said: “The construction of HS2 is an opportunity to rebalance Britain's economy. The scale and duration of the programme means we can use it to create a legacy in skills and diversity that delivers long lasting benefits.
“Britain has brilliant engineers but we don't have enough. We will bring new people into the industry. By 2020 we will need 2 million workers with engineering skills in the UK. We need 87,000 graduate engineers every year. By 2030 we will be 37,000 short.”
“We are serious about addressing this problem through this programme. The industry just isn't diverse. We need the best people we can get, which we can't do if its not diverse. The solutions we plan are long term, which we can do because of the programme's longevity. We can look at encouraging young girls into engineering to work on HS2. The ambassadors are in schools already, and the colleges are a great opportunity.”
The government announced in September plans to open two high speed rail colleges at Doncaster and Birmingham in 2017 to train new staff to work on the line.
Next month a £60 million contract to assess the condition of the land on the route between Birmingham and London will be awarded. This will be followed by contracts for several early stage elements of phase one of the project. These contracts will include tunnelling work worth £3 billion; £3.8 billion for work on the surface route such as bridges, cuttings and viaducts; £2.9 billion for stations at Euston, Old Oak Common and Birmingham; £1.7 billion of contracts for railway systems such as overhead lines, signalling, electrical distribution and telecommunications, and £400 million contracts for design services.
Companies will be able to prequalify for the work next year, with invitations to tender sent out during 2016. The tunnelling and surface work will be split into £1 billion packages. HS2 is still working on how best to procure the railway systems, and the £7.5 billion worth of rolling stock which will run on both phases of the high speed line.
Beth West, commercial director for HS2, said: “After feedback from industry we're considering large route-wide functional packages for railway systems. We're also thinking about railway systems as a service instead of just kit. We need to guard against technical obsolence and decide when the best time is to buy.
“Specifications for our high speed train will take longer because of our need to run on the classic rail network and how we package the in-cab signalling contracts separate from the rolling stock. We'll be working on that over the next 15 months before the contracts are put out to tender.”
The HS2 route will serve 100 towns and cities when complete and will increase capacity on the UK rail network by 20,000 seats per hour. HS2 estimates it will remove 500,000 lorries from the roads.
Minister of state for transport, Baroness Kramer, said: “This is the most exciting engineering project in the UK for generations. The fundamental case has been made and the debate has progressed to how we build it and make the most of our investment. HS2 is just around the corner.
“This is a real opportunity for British engineering to make its mark and showcase its abilities to the rest of the world.”