Balfour Beatty Vinci HS2 training academy opens

23rd November 2021

A new training academy established by High Speed 2 (HS2)’s construction partner for the West Midlands, Balfour Beatty Vinci (BBV), has opened its doors.

BBV and South and City College Birmingham have partnered to offer opportunities for local people aged 19+ to reskill and retrain for a career in the construction industry, working on the HS2 project.

Phase one of HS2 is already under construction and will see a new 140-mile high-speed railway line constructed from London to Birmingham.

BBV is building the West Midlands section of the phase one route, 90km in length and stretching from Warwickshire through to Birmingham city centre and up into Staffordshire. This will include over 40 viaducts, 66 overbridges and four motorway crossings.

Readiness for jobs

The Skills Academy, based within South and City College’s Bordesley Green campus, is the first in the region dedicated to providing training in readiness for jobs on the new railway and aims to help HS2 to plug the local skills gap.

In its recent report ‘Building the Skills to Deliver HS2 – Phase One and 2a’, HS2 Ltd forecast that it will support over 34,000 jobs at peak construction, including over 2,000 new apprentice starts.

In the West Midlands, it is estimated that the construction of HS2 will generate a constant labour demand of around 10,000 jobs from now until 2027/28. The findings of the report carefully examine the type of jobs it expects will be needed and measures this against local labour availability.

Plugging skills shortages

Where it looks like there are skills shortages, HS2, its construction partners and key stakeholders including local authorities, training delivery organisations and Local Enterprise Partnerships are working together to invest in plugging the gap. The BBV Skills Academy is a product of that investment.

The Academy is open to everyone, not just those attending South and City College Birmingham. Training programmes vary in length, according to the job roles they align to, but are tailored to meet each individual’s requirements, regardless of whether or not they have previous work experience.

For more information about the BBV Skills Academy and the training courses available visit the South and City College Birmingham website.