Terry Morgan, Chairman of Crossrail – a £15bn project – started as an apprentice and is therefore well placed to demonstrate the possibilities this route to the profession offers.  Terry said:  “I started as an apprentice over 50 years and it’s done ok with me”.  Listen to the podcast now - click here.

His own experience of the value of apprenticeships is demonstrated with what Crossrail has achieved by providing people similar opportunities to enter the profession. These lessons are probably the key reason the Secretary of State, Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin, asked Terry to develop the Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy, published in January 2016.  

The government has a pledge to create 30,000 new rail and road apprenticeships by 2020.  There is also a focus on transport infrastructure at the moment.  As Terry said:  “We have to recognise that there is a big commitment from government to infrastructure, both on roads and on rail. Again, in my experience – with politics being what it is can be quite fickle – if we don’t respond to this new agenda then government will go off prioritise some other thing that it needs to do.”

To support this investment there is a need to have the right skills to deliver.  Terry then explains how Crossrail has supported the skills agenda, he said:  “We’ve had a particular focus around the importance of developing the skills that support our programme, it’s a huge programme.  And I am really pleased, with a lot of effort - let me put this in context - we set ourselves the target of 400 apprentices by 2018.  We made it a contractual obligation of our supply side that they would have apprentices for £3m worth of contract value.  It was going to be 400 by 2018, today its 550 [at April 2016]. We’ve just blasted the number out”.

Terry then digs down into the figures to demonstrate the wider value that transport infrastructure projects can help deliver, particularly in terms of employment opportunities to help address social challenges.
He went onto say:  “Inside that, there are two other metrics that I’m very proud of which is that nationally one in five of apprentices comes from what is described as NEETS - not in employment, education, or training – 40% of our apprentices were NEETS.”

He explains how these individuals are “sometimes trapped” in their environments and that they have responded very positively to the opportunities they have been given.  

“The second metric is that in terms of last year, 27% of our apprentices were female” Terry explained.  In the strategy there is a target of 20% that these should be female by 2020.   

Terry manages to put investment in transport into a wider context:  “This is the opportunity, not only to deliver; but I often think on my Crossrail programme, I often say, big though it is, it’s £15bn of investment, big though it is - it’s more than a railway.  It’s all the legacy issues that go with it, around skills, about employment, about economic regeneration: a whole suite of things that always follow investment in transport infrastructure”.  

There would appear to be a two-way benefit from apprenticeship programmes.  On the one hand Terry said that people love passing on their skills; andon the other hand, when people are given opportunities [particularly from the NEET group] they are so hungry to prove themselves and find it is a fantastic experience.  

This is about telling a story to not only government, but to sector, and to the next generation.  Terry said:  “In my mind we have to big responsibility to not only deliver the product we need to deliver, but to demonstrate to everybody that there is a value added attached to this that makes it impossible for people to resist talking about the next big programme.”

The interview comes from the latest in the CIHT podcast series where Justin Ward speaks to leading individuals in the transport world.  To find others and to listen click here.