The Bostonair Group recently moved into the rail sector with the expansion of its leading recruitment, line maintenance and technical training services. Boston Rail comes under the wing of the Bostonair Group – which boasts decades of experience in the aviation, wind energy and renewables sectors. The move comes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic with the business having a significant number of highly-qualified engineers who are out of work and would be of benefit to the rail industry. In the latest of our Guest Writer series, Head of Rail Tom Anderton explains more about the expansion.
In recent weeks and days, we have all seen the announcements made by Leaders across the World which has affected many sectors with a number of Countries either going into full or partial lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19. One of the most badly hit sectors is the Airline industry, as the restrictions on travel has seen tens of thousands of planes grounded and as a result aircraft engineers, maintenance teams and other staff being either laid off or given leave, with some of this unpaid. Many aircraft engineers and other personnel in the sector work on a contract basis, and as such are in a tough situation with passenger traffic not likely to pick up for some time. Aviation, as one can imagine is highly regulated with key focusses on safety and quality and clearly shares more than a few commonalities with the rail sector.
Aircraft engineers are broken down into several groups; there are those with a more mechanical background, and those with an electrical/avionics background, some who work as fitters, those who work on new aircraft build or maintenance/refurbishment of existing aircraft.
Why Rail?
There have been announcements on social media over the last few days such as Network Rail looking for people, rolling stock providers looking for people and generally maintenance programmes being brought forward. For those Rail Infrastructure Companies who have some short-medium term personnel demands then please do consider aircraft engineers. These highly experienced people can add a lot of value to your team, and come with a vast knowledge of maintenance, mechanical and/or electrical systems, working safely, ensuring planes are repaired/refurbished on time and meeting other challenging deadlines. Other skills include logistics and working with data systems.
When thinking about maintenance teams or rolling stock build/repair it is easy to see how these individuals could add value through cross-skilling and by embedding into existing teams where their experience could support the wider project. Tapping into this could be an innovative way of resolving shorter term challenges and filling resource needs. It’s not a huge leap to see how important experienced maintenance personnel could be to the Rail industry, particularly in difficult times such as now and also for future CP6 and HS2 projects.
Bostonair Group
Bostonair Group provide a significant number of aircraft engineers and other maintenance and office personnel to the aviation sector in the UK and Europe. Our customers include DHL/EAT, Lufthansa, Condor and Austrian Airlines.
At this current time Bostonair Group have a significant number of highly experienced aircraft engineers available who would be extremely useful assets for the rail industry. If you’d like to discuss further, please contact me on either 07825799382 or tomanderton@bostonrail.co.uk
Tom Anderton, Head of Rail at the Bostonair Group
