Developing Engineers

The Thameslink Programme, as you may well already know, is a £6 billion upgrade/expansion of the existing Thameslink rail network. Current trains are being replaced with newer and longer carriages; in addition to greater capacity, these trains will service a greater range of stations to the north and south of London. Passengers on these trains will no longer need to change trains in London to get to where they need.

At first glance, the Thameslink Programme sounds like a godsend, especially to regular commuters. We’ve all seen the legendary photos of overcrowded trains in Japan and shuddered to think how it felt to be there… Read more…

Well, I thought last week was a big week for engineering news – amazing how wrong you can be!  This week the Government gave the green-light to the first phase of High Speed 2 (HS2), the largest single UK infrastructure investment since the first motorways in the 1950s, which aims to deliver 225mph trains between London and Birmingham by 2026, and on to Manchester and Leeds by 2033.

The price tag for this meagre ambition: a mere £32,700,000,000.  So is this a vital and visionary economic investment for the future?  Or the greatest white elephant ever conceived in these Isles?

It was certainly a dramatic announcement as far as infrastructure investments go, with proponents and opponents of the scheme lining up to tell each other how wrong each other was, made somewhat more surreal in my opinion by the Transport Secretary Justine Greening who, after making the initial announcement and having some photos taken leaning on trains, was suddenly nowhere to be found; replaced instead by junior Transport Minister Norman Baker for the day’s news interviews.

So, what are the cases for and against HS2?

The Government and business leaders say HS2 is essential to relieve pressure on our creaking railways, will take vast numbers of cars off the roads and cut short-haul flights, and lead to greater economic prosperity in the Midlands and the north of England.  Along the proposed route however, councils and local people derided the almost total lack of consultation and the ‘flimsiness’ of the business case put forward, whilst the Woodland Trust suggests that HS2 will destroy vast swathes of ancient forest.

Debates are likely to rage on over the next couple of years and legal challenges are certainly not unlikely, but one very important question hasn’t yet been fully discussed:

What sort of engineering ‘legacy’ might High Speed 2 create?

Work on High Speed 2 is set to start in 2016, coinciding perfectly with the planned end of Crossrail in 2017/18.  An immense opportunity therefore exists to have continuous, significant investment in railway engineering and manufacturing for twenty-four years (2009 – 2033), with the possibility of extending the high-speed network to Scotland as well.  Such sustained investment will hopefully create large numbers of skilled technical and engineering jobs, as well as significant export opportunities from the expertise gained and retained in the UK economy.

Surely this is one of the greatest benefits of High Speed 2 – it’s just disappointing that so few people are discussing it!

Currently some of the British press and various members of parliament have got themselves all wound up over the award of the Thameslink train contract to Siemens rather than Bombardier.

It would appear that Bombardier is apparently a British company, whereas Siemens are the evil Germans.

Clearly most of these people haven’t been near a large engineering company for a few decades; it’s no coincidence that most mentions of companies such as GE, Alstom, Siemens, Bombardier, etc. are normally prefixed with “the large multinational”. Nearly every large engineering company today only tenuously holds onto its roots; the nationality of the CEO is up-for-grabs most of the time leaving just the nominal location of the corporate headquarters to define where a company might be from.

Walk into any office at a very large engineering company and you will find it filled with engineers and technicians from all over the world, pursuing their engineering interests. It doesn’t matter where the staff are from; everyone is graded on merit.

Yes it’s a shame that the Bombardier facility may have to close but let’s stop trying to fit today’s multinational engineering mega-firms into the clichéd nationalistic stereotypes of the 1950s.