Nexus and the Tyne & Wear Metro have returned from the Rail Business Awards in London triumphant having been won the Education and Training Excellence Award as well as being highly commended in other categories. The award was made in recognition for the boost they gave driver recruitment and customer service training by opening the new South Shields Learning Centre.
The £9 million Learning Centre opened in 2020 and is a purpose built training facility, bringing a wide range of rail infrastructure and operations training all under one roof in a new modern setting which also saw South Shields Metro station relocated.
Martin Kearney, Chief Operating Officer at Nexus, said: “This prestigious award is recognition for all the hard work that we have done to transform our employee development and training facilities at our new Learning Centre. It’s a tremendous achievement for us to win at the Rail Business Awards, where we were up against the best in the UK rail industry. We have trained a record number of new Metro drivers at the new learning centre, and we can also deliver a wider range of customer service and infrastructure training there too, which is helping to drive excellence right across our business. I was also delighted to see Nexus and Stadler highly commended for the work that we put local people at the heart of the design process for our new Metro train fleet.”
The Learning Centre was funded through a £7 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Fund through the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and a £1.4 million contribution by Nexus. It includes a 70 metre stretch of dual track for rail infrastructure training, including track, points, signalling and overhead line.
It will eventually be home to a new computerised Metro driver training simulator based on the new Stadler built trains. It will also allow engineering staff to learn how to maintain the new trains
As well as winning the award, Nexus and Stadler were Highly Commended in the Marketing and Communications Excellence category for involving 23,000 people in consultation on the design of the fleet of new trains due to be introduced from 2023.