The London enabling works contract is being delivered by a join venture of Costain and Skanska. Over 2000 hours have gone into helping young people find work and close to 1900 hours have been spent on school and college visits and mentoring activity.

In addition, 5700 weeks of apprenticeships have been delivered alongside 2288 days of work placements. The equivalent of 42 long term unemployed people are being supported into work over the life of the contract. Local people employed directly with the joint venture number 426 and local supply chain spend is equivalent to £73M of economic benefit.

Costain Skanska’s head of legacy Louise Dailly said: “A key focus for our team on the enabling works contract in London is to provide local jobs and support economic development to leave a lasting social legacy in the communities we’re working in.
“We’ve also looked at how we can deliver additional social value across our programme,” she added. “One example is tackling homelessness.”

This has included a partnership with social enterprise Buses for Homeless on the scheme. The initiative involves the refurbishment of decommissioned London buses where homeless people can stay and undertake training.

Its founder Dan Atkins said: “From the day we moved onto the HS2 site in October 2019, we have had nothing but support. Not only have they provided us with key equipment, supported us with paperwork and the land to run our project, most importantly, the team have helped us upskill our guests and through their supply chain, they have offered full time employment on the HS2 programme.”

In total the Costain Skanska joint venture, its supply chain and staff have donated £23,000 to voluntary and community social enterprises and over 8000 volunteer hours have been given to support community projects.

The partners, in addition to Strabag – which are delivering tunnelling for the High Speed 2 route between Euston and the M25 as SCS JV– are also creating new jobs in South Yorkshire after awarding a major contract to Sheffield based railway technology SME 3Squared.

The three year contract will see the company supplying its RailSmart software for a supply chain management system, and allows the firm to retain and expand its workforce in a time of economic uncertainty under Covid-19.

(Photograph: HS2 Ltd | John Zammit at Absolute Photography Ltd)