The Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street talks about the new Transport, Rail and Infrastructure Academy (TRIA), future career opportunities in rail, what the Combined Authority has contributed to it and whether he ever wanted to be a train driver at the launch of the academy at the lack Country Innovative Manufacturing Organisation's Very Light Rail National Innovation Centre in Dudley
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00:00 So there's all sorts of jobs in rail, that's the key point.
00:03 So of course we've just announced today more work at Aldridge, we've got the works in South
00:07 Birmingham, we've got the works at Walsall Wolverhampton, we've of course got the tram
00:10 works through Dudley and we've got the works of course with HS2 as well.
00:14 So there's so much going on but if you think of the type of works there are, there's all
00:17 the groundwork skills of course, there's all the engineering skills, there's the design
00:21 skills, there's the project management skills, supervisory roles.
00:26 So really this industry can create all sorts of opportunities and one thing I've found
00:30 really really inspiring is I've met people who've gone into HS2 as sort of junior and
00:34 as an already moving through the career structure.
00:37 So it's a career not just a job.
00:40 This is really about local jobs for local people.
00:43 The industry is sufficiently vibrant in the West Midlands with all of the construction,
00:46 the maintenance that there is, so we're really saying to local people through the alliance
00:50 that's been set up here with the City of Wolverhampton College, whether it be in Coventry and Birmingham
00:54 or Wolverhampton or Dudley, four places now, that local people have been brought into this
00:59 industry.
01:00 So over the last four years we've put in actually £7 million for jobs into this sector, so
01:04 it's a pretty sizeable commitment actually and you know in terms of the number of jobs
01:09 we have talked about 12,000 jobs alone in HS2.
01:12 So that talks you about the sort of scale that there is here.
01:15 Genuinely there are many opportunities.
01:17 So it's a good partnership, so of course primarily the City of Wolverhampton College, then the
01:22 NIS as a sort of training agency here and they're actually finding roles.
01:27 We sort of specify the programmes and then fund them critically, but then there's lots
01:33 of private sector employers actually who are saying we will take the people on for work
01:37 afterwards.
01:38 So it really is from the origination through to the jobs on the ground, a good alliance.
01:42 So it's pretty unique in that sense.
01:44 I can't say I always wanted to work on the railroad.
01:46 If you'd asked me to do anything of course I wanted to be the train driver or maybe the
01:49 guard, but actually the modern railway is much driven by the digital signalling as it
01:54 is by those jobs.