Practical element: Apprentices need to have a good craft skills and a way with fixing things
Phil Hufton, chief operating officer at London Underground, has big responsibilities: a budget of £1.6 billion and 17,000 employees. If there’s a crisis, such as the threat of a strike, he can be found at the negotiating table, engaging with the unions. “I’ve averted industrial action that could cost London millions and the next day provided a safe and reliable train service that moves four million people a day.
“And that all started from being a craft apprentice,” he says. A keen promoter of apprenticeships, Hufton was educated at grammar school, but decided to become an apprentice in Derby at what was then British Rail Engineering, instead of going to university. That firm is long gone, subsumed over the years and by various takeovers into Bombardier, but he looks back on his first job with fondness. “The practical route was the right route for me,” says Hufton. “For me it was always about engineering.”
London Underground now operates a range of engineering apprenticeships, and its scheme, which closed to new entrants last month, is oversubscribed many times over. Training takes place at two centres: in Acton, in the west of the capital, and in Stratford, in east London. This helps to ensure that the catchment area for apprentices is as wide as possible, and also that they can be trained somewhere reasonably close to home. “We didn’t want them to have to travel across the whole city to come to work,” says Hufton.
Apprenticeships are also important for DB Regio Tyne & Wear (DBTW), which maintains and operates trains and stations on the North East’s Metro system. Part of Arriva and ultimately owned by German firm Deutsche Bahn, DBTW runs the concession for the second largest metropolitan light rail system in the UK after London Underground, which encompasses 60 stations located around Tyne & Wear.
Director of engineering Louise Shaw runs a small team, with a maximum of three apprentices at any one time. The stations and fleet of 90 metro-cars on the system are run on behalf of Nexus, the Tyne & Wear Passenger Transport Executive. Shaw – who is involved with the IMechE railway division – and her colleagues have less room for manoeuvre with Nexus as customer than if they were running a rail franchise, as they do not get revenue from fares. She says: “We have to focus on delivering the concession requirements – rather than those things that are ‘we would like to do’.”
One of the things Shaw enjoyed as a youngster was taking bits of kit apart and putting them back together again – not always in the same form. “I used to get told off for having things left over,” she recalls. Her nascent engineering skills were recognised early on: her parents still have a clipping from the local paper of Shaw showing off a satellite she built at junior school. She trained as a mechanical engineer at what was then Portsmouth Polytechnic on a BEng sandwich course, which allowed her to take in some industrial placements.
“I ended up working for four companies, from a tiny research organisation through to Lufthansa, Philips and an engineering design consultancy. It was diverse. I had a range of experience from applied research to the machinery of big business,” she says.
Running repairs: It can be difficult to find spares for some of Tyne & Wear Metro's fleet
DB Regio’s fleet includes 1,500V DC electric multiple units, which are largely standard older German S Bahn cars. They were, intriguingly, built in Birmingham by a now defunct plant. This can make tracking down spares difficult. Shaw says: “They are good from the perspective of being able to re-engineer and replace bits that have become obsolete. But there are some elements where there is only a single supplier, or very few suppliers with long lead times. It can make it difficult to keep up with the maintenance regime.”
One of the youngsters helping with the upkeep of the regime, which has seen a massive improvement in passenger ratings of the Metro thanks to a zero-tolerance approach to graffiti and strict cleanliness standards, is DB Regio first-year apprentice technician Ben Jackson. Jackson, 19, says he had little understanding of engineering before taking on the role but knew he enjoyed tinkering with his dad’s car. He is now gaining BTEC and HNC qualifications as part of the four-year apprenticeship. “I didn’t really want to go to university,” he says. “I had travelled on the Metro to school, so I knew it well.”
Shaw adds: “An apprenticeship can be the best route for those sorts of people. You have the opportunity to be mentored by senior staff.” Many apprentices on the Tyne & Wear Metro go on to enjoy long careers on the system, she says. “In engineering, it’s important not just to know the principles of your craft, but the practical application of it. Otherwise your capability is less rich – and that’s why apprenticeships are of tremendous value. For the employer, it’s a chance to conduct a long-term interview.”
She adds that governments have made mistakes in assuming that everyone should go to university. “That’s just nonsense,” she says. “There are very good and capable people who could have gone to university but have gone through the apprentice route who become outstanding engineers. Some people are late developers and they can miss the boat with GCSEs and A-levels before they’ve even begun.
“Some people are very clever but less endowed with the ability to express that in a manner that befits GCSEs, A-levels and brilliant academic results. That doesn’t make them less good at understanding how things work and fixing them when they go wrong.”
Hufton of London Underground agrees that apprenticeships can give opportunities to talented youngsters who are not academically minded. He says that one of the pleasures of his job is attending the evening events where apprentices’ deeds are signed. “The parents are proud,” he says. His own career proves that a rail apprentice can make it to the top of the industry. “No one has ever given me anything,” he says. “It is about how you apply yourself. I am a very ambitious person.”
London Underground is in the enviable position of turning away some applicants to the apprenticeship scheme but Hufton is in no doubt that there is a skills shortage in the industry, exacerbated by the number of schemes in the capital: not just the Tube, but Crossrail, Crossrail 2 and HS2. The new University Technical College in Greenwich is proving useful in providing potential apprentices who already have technical skills, he says.
He also believes that engineering is enjoying an enhanced profile at a time when technology is pivotal to the future of the Tube. “Getting people into and around London is going to be a big challenge. Technology is playing a huge part.”
He concludes: “We don’t want an organisation full of academics. I’m not saying that to be disrespectful to people who go through university. But people have the ability to do things in different ways. We can give people a second chance through apprenticeships, and there is a massive skills shortage in rail.”