A senior Siemens executive is delighted with the progress being made on and off the huge rail village now rapidly emerging in Goole.
Finbarr Dowling made tracks into the East Riding after overseeing the blade factory delivery in Hull, and while offshore wind and the latest trains may share an interest in electrification, it has been the region’s can-do attitude to big business that has impressed.
The company’s director of localisation was delighted to welcome Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove to officially open the first operational element, the £7 million components facility, where maintenance and servicing has been reshored and expanded.
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He said: “This is just the start for us. With the wider project, we came here nearly four-and-a-half years ago, and it was just a field. You have to have the vision about where it is going to, and we are now executing that vision, and it is always a pleasant surprise as you get into it, that more things start to happen.
While first online, it was actually an addition that emerged as plans were developed for the sprawling site that is geared up to become a national centre of excellence.
“This was never in the plans, this is a ‘Brucie Bonus’ for us, but plays into the bigger ambition of wanting to create the rail village,” Mr Dowling said.
“We’re bringing back work done on the continent, the majority of it was in Germany. These are very, very good jobs, skilled jobs, some skills that were being lost in the UK.
“Manufacturing should start in March next year, and we’re really looking forward to that,” Mr Dowling said. The “mass recruitment” is likely to start in the next two months, giving time to find the people and train them.
“Within 18 months this site will have 300 to 400 people working, and we could be getting up to 700 depending on the train orders,” Mr Dowling said. “There’s no reason then, why we shouldn’t maintain that. Everything is going to plan, and credit to the council, and Andrew Percy the MP, it is a great place to do business. It was one of the reasons we located here, because we had seen it with Hull. It has been magnificent.
“We’ve now got the components facility here and the RaisE (Rail Accelerator and Innovation Solutions hub for Enterprise) and offices, then there’s an innovation centre with University of Birmingham for which we hope funding will be announced very soon. Then there’s more to do with this site when we win more train orders.”
Mr Gove was shown the entire site with the build-out of the buildings now complete, and the fitting out to build the next generation rolling stock underway. “It is important,” Mr Dowling said of the high profile visit. “Michael Gove is a very senior government minister, so for him to come to Goole to help celebrate step one, meet employees and apprentices is excellent. It also gives us the chance to show what more we are going to be doing, and who we hope to attract. It is important to have that innovation around and we think suppliers, particularly smaller ones, will want to be based here.
“A nice thing is how it is now embedded into the community too. We’ve spent a lot of money on the nature reserve, £150,000, we’re working with 13 primary schools, and now we’re looking to get a hotel built too.That is really pleasurable.
“We’ve started with a field, and now end up with all this added value, it is proper regeneration like we did in Hull. We started with the blade factory, and the UTC came on the back of that. This is the exciting bit, the positive effect you can have on a place. We’ve got apprentices now coming in, graduates, it is really exciting stuff.”
And it was certainly exciting for Craig Beech, Siemens’ service operations manager for components, having been the first employee of a new division. He now has a 40-strong team expanding out of Leeds and into his East Riding homeland, having been brought up west of Hull.
A 10 year journey has seen it develop into a state-of-the-art addition for the global giant under his watch. Having gone to Leeds Beckett University, he entered the world of work with Alstom, working on gas turbine blades, before joining Siemens just over a decade ago.
“It is great to have been so involved in setting it up, from joining in Leeds to 10 years later building my own factory almost in my home town,” he said.
“It has been a lot of hard work, 12 weeks ago it was an empty building, but we have managed to get everything in, get everything operational, without any disruption to customers. To have the minister open it has been really nice.”
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