We asked our Engineering Director Michael Hickey why he thought it was important to invest into Apprenticeships – and here’s what he said:
“When I joined the rail industry there was a large intake of trainees across many of the Atkins offices. This continued year on year for the first few years of my career. I then noticed that the tap was suddenly turned off and there seemed to be roughly a 10-year gap before I saw anything like this again across the signalling design industry. This was only ever going to lead to an eventual skills gap in the industry, especially with large numbers of the British Rail generation fast approaching retirement.
Now sadly we see some of the big companies outsource their bulk signalling design services offshore. However, as an ethical business we believe that the right thing to do is to provide opportunities to our next generation of homegrown engineers!
The attitudes, work ethics and continued team support from all our apprentices has proved us right and we definitely made a wise business investment decision.”
So, what’s your thoughts on recruiting apprenticeships and growing your own in-house talent? 🤔 🤔
