News editor
Environmental and skills concerns add to the doubts over the future of the High Speed 2 project
HS2 finds itself in the spotlight once more with MPs casting doubts over its environmental credentials and a trade body warning that there won’t be enough engineers to build it.
The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) believes the consultation process on HS2 has not ‘fully addressed the many environmental concerns’, whilst APSCo today addresses on going concerns about skills shortages and the loss of British engineers to overseas projects.
In its report published today EAC states, ‘parliament, in its capacity as the planning authority for HS2, should ensure that everything possible is done to minimise damage to ancient woodlands and sites of special scientific interest (SSSI), and that where loss is genuinely unavoidable, that compensation is applied to the fullest extent possible.’
The committee notes that surveys have yet to be conducted on 40 per cent of the land that HS2 will be built on, a situation that the should be rectified as quickly as possible in order to identify any protected species not included in HS2 Ltd’s current Environmental Statement.
‘The government needs to show real commitment to dealing with the impact that HS2 will have on our countryside and wildlife,’ Joan Walley MP, committee chair said in a statement. ‘Ancient woodlands and other hard to replace sites of natural value should not be subordinated to crude economic calculations of cost and benefit.’
EAC notes also that HS2 may need to run at slower speeds in order to help with compliance to the Climate Change Act, stating: ‘While the impact of lower maximum train speed on reducing emissions is currently not seen as substantial, the legally binding commitment to reduce emissions makes even a small reduction desirable.
‘HS2 Ltd and the Department [of Transport] should therefore examine the scope for requiring a reduced maximum speed for the trains until electricity generation has been sufficiently decarbonised to make that a marginal issue, and publish the calculations that would underpin such a calculation.’
The HS2 Hybrid Bill will be given its second reading on 28 April.
APSCo reports a rise in permanent (33 per cent) and contract engineering vacancies (22 per cent) over the past year, warning that future infrastructure projects will struggle if government and business leaders fail to acknowledge the demand for skilled British engineers on overseas projects.
Matchtech’s recent Confidence Index revealed that over half of respondents would seriously contemplate working overseas, with a further two-thirds thinking that Britain will ‘cease to be an engineering world leader in the future’.
‘The investment the government is pumping into our infrastructure network can only be positive news for the UK, but only if this is backed up with the necessary manpower to enable projects to happen,’ Ann Swain, chief executive, APSCo said. ‘As it currently stands major initiatives which, in the long run, will create hundreds if not thousands of jobs, risk being halted or even axed unless action is taken imminently. We are already facing a brain drain from the UK engineering sector.’
MACH 2014 opens its doors today at the NEC in Birmingham and a quick visit to the event’s website sees the Machine Tool Association continuing its efforts to encourage people into a career in manufacturing.
The Student Zone has been designed for prospective candidates, teachers and trainers who’ve been – or are considering a visit – to MACH and are keen to further their interest in manufacturing. Broken up into eight sections, the Student Zone includes an overview of various processes – including milling, metal forming and robotics – a section in the importance of numeracy and how it’s used to manufacture products, plus case studies from apprentices.
The list of exhibitors is too numerous to mention here, but Bruderer UK have been in touch with news of a ‘world first’ being revealed at the show, plus the announcement of two strategic partnerships. For the first time, the Luton-based company will showcase its Bruderer BSTA 280-75 stamping press, which has already been supplied to Harwin in deal worth £500,000.
If the industry needs engineers, they shall take in apprentices and then produce engineers.
For a change put engineers in charge but keep some MBAs for counting the money and printing invoices.
What can one say? Without swearing, what can we use to describe something that started as risible and becomes more so as each announcement comes out ? A googol raised to the power of a googol is a googolplex; I know risible’s an adjective, not a noun, but risible-plex may be all we can politely say about this ?!?@##*? joke.
Well that’s lucky!! The fastest current regular service is 199mph. NO TRAINS RUN AT A HIGHER “SCHEDULED” SPEED IN THE WORLD By running at a lower speed there will be no problem buying an existing high speed train. That will save development costs and mean they can buy either a Spanish, French, Japanese or German train. Big sigh of relief all round
Engineers will come running to this project if employers pay a competitive salary.
That is all that will stop qualified engineers leaving this country.
SIMPLES!!
Firstly, as an engineer with an MBA, I’d like to apply for the job!
Secondly, how many more spurious objections / NIMBY whines / Tree-hugger nonsense do we have to listen to before someone (the government?) gets their finger out and starts building this. With an election only a year away, you can bet the next thing will be to defer any decisions until 2016, rather than announce a start date.
Have to agree with ralf. I work for a company that runs a very effective apprenticeship scheme which not only has good reviews and is generally held in high regard but also encourages very high levels of employee retention. A number of the apprentices have gone on to start on the Graduate Development Programme and take degrees but many stay in the hands on engineering area, forming the new body of workers who in turn teach the new apprentices. The sooner people start to realise that a degree does not an engineer make the better it will be for the industry as a whole!
TLDR: More work needed to improve the standing of apprenticeships as a viable alternative to a degree as an entry point to engineering. You can always develop the degree later!
Steve-surely it’s possible to be an engineer and still accept that driving a project through the countryside regardless of environment impact/peoples live’s is a gross thing thing to do? Though heaven knows engineers (“proper” ones) have much to feel genuinely bitter about since early 1980s
Sorry Steve, but just because you don’t care about the environment, it doesn’t mean that HMG can just override planning law when it’s inconvenient, and neither can you.
If this needs building, it will be possible to find a route for it that doesn’t wreck what little prime woodland, etc. we still have left.
Of course there will be insufficient Engineers “Up-North” because Middlesbrough MP stated in Commons that £250 per head is spent on Capital Infra-structure. Meanwhile the more heavily populated London has £4,800 per head. No Engineers will be available for HS2 because they will be working CrossRail 2, the New Hi-Speed Line to Boris Ireland, the second Thames Barrier, upgrading A2 to motorway, etc.
I agree with Joan Riley MP, that the route needs to be defined properly without stupidly, unnecessary destruction of Ancient Woodland & SSI.
However, if compliance to the Climate Change Act is the objective by the committee, the only aeroplanes permitted in Europe will be turboprops running on Vegetable Oil and all roads in London within M25 must be converted to Bridleways to reduce Fossil Fuel usage.
Meanwhile, can the Eastern half of England have a 3 lane Motorway to Edinburgh? At the moment the “The Great North Road” [A1] is a resurfaced, SINGLE track, Roman Road.
Lobby-ests tried to kill motor travel by having a man with a red flag walk in front so maybe it is time to suggest to our MPs that finally the same attitude will kill the country and we will have a land fit for horses.
Forget the project, build a large gauge cargo moving track to circumvent the UK, with container type handling facilities at major distribution points. Get all that cargo off the motorways and the north south divide will not exist. what goes round -comes round and round.
I cannot believe the government waste so much time. Just ditch this stupid project once and for all.
Losing engineers abroad is about salary. It one of the main reasons we lose skills. This is sign that engineering salaries in the UK need to start competing with those abroad.
01/06/1939 – Latest. The plans to build a chain of “fields” to link the south and east to the continent via high speed aerial vehicles is still receiving protests and civil disobedience in an attempt to prevent the “huge impact to people’s lives, to the environment from all the carbon-fuel burning air traffic, to the nesting grounds of lesser spotted tree-hugger frogs and underground newts. Suggestions to relocate them upnorth out of the way of decent folk have been rebuffed by the government. Claims by protesters that these developments will be not fiels but large collections of ugly concrete bunkers and underground explosives stores are still surfacing, as is the claim that all these day and night trips to the foreign lands will inevitably lead to breaches of flood defences and Tsunamis in the Ruhr Valley.
The so-called “Dig For Victory” plans are also condemned by irate locals, claiming this will turn beautiful countryside into ugly assortments of wooden huts and vegetation, leading to the extinction of hundreds of indigenous species. “Vegetarians Go Home to Vegetaria” they cry. “England for meat-eaters”.
Thank God we’ve moved on abit since the, haven’t we?
Climate Change – whilst the UK ‘manages’ its emissions, other countries don’t appear to have any problems. We will continue to suffer the results of other European and global activities that don’t appear to be troubled by a marginal change in the maximum speed for HS2. The technology available to us is no different to that used in Germany, France, Japan and China.