NWAA Chairman’s summer statement By Prof Andy Schofield
By Paula Gill NWAA Chief Exec’s summer statement
CONTENTS
02 Chairman’s statement
A very warm welcome to the latest edition of the Plane Talk Magazine. Since the last edition, we have had a very eventful 3 months. The highlight must be the Annual Conference that was held at the end of March at the Dunkenhalgh Hotel. The theme of the conference was ‘The Challenge of Achieving Sustainable Growth for the Aerospace and Defence Sector’ and we had a line-up of outstanding and truly inspirational speakers. The conference, which was attended by 143 people, gave us a great insight into the Global Megatrends and the opportunities for the Advance Engineering and Manufacturing companies in the Aerospace and Defence sector. We also discussed the challenges for the sector in terms of addressing net-zero, improving the time to market and productivity, digital transformation, and skills development. The importance of collaboration, cross sector engagement, networking, digital technologies, and strong leadership were highlighted as key enablers needed to address these challenges and put the North West in a strong position. During my closing speech, I referred to two words that I believe came out strongly during the day – ‘Passion and Pride.’ There was immense passion for the Aerospace industry and great pride in the people and capability we have in the North West. We are at the heart of the Aerospace and Defence industry in the UK.
Hello and Welcome to the Summer!
The next events to take place will be:
I concluded with restating the focus of the NWAA, which is to deliver value to every member of the North West Aerospace Alliance by providing the opportunity to network, collaborate and promote their capabilities both in the UK and Internationally in order to increase future business opportunities. I firmly believe that the conference provided a great example of the progress we are making in trying to achieve our purpose. We are actively looking to increase our membership and build on the network and community that has strengthened over the last 12 months and I would encourage new companies to see how they can benefit from membership of the NWAA.
Also on the skills issues, NWAA have been awarded a contract from LCC to deliver our own Lancashire skills boot camps that will bring 30 individuals through training, up to level 3, in the Nuclear and Defence sectors, we are on the journey to make new in roads to drawing attention to our fantastic and dynamic industry for future careers. Watchtower continues to move from strength to strength, and it’s great to see so many more businesses are engaged into the process now. The businesses having been getting great results and the feedback is brilliant as there have been great successes being achieved. Included in these successes have been a number of Tier 1 businesses, who are keeping a close contact with us through the programme, are finding new supplier opportunities with the businesses that are engaged in the programme as they go on this amazing journey, uncovering additional capabilities and markets. Engagements and agreements have been made and new contracts offered and approved. Great News for the businesses on this journey of growth and discovery! – Have you signed up yet?? For any information on the new programmes and projects NWAA team are working on, on your behalf, please feel free to get in touch to find out where you can be part of the journey. For those of you that are attending the Paris Airshow this year, please reach out to us and let us know, as we will be visiting the show this year in preparation for Farnborough 2024 and would love to come and visit or meet up with you. Continue to shine as bright as the sun this summer!
03 CEO’s statement
ESG#2 being held at Siemens June ‘23 ESG#3 being held at Airbus Oct ‘23 ESG#4 being held at BAE Systems Nov ‘23 The low carbon supply chain and the net zero target, air, sea, land & bringing all of the themes of the previous ESG events together. The ESG #2 event is for only 40 guests (on a first come first served basis) and will be held at Siemens Motion Controls in Congleton to discuss how they brought forward and achieved the target of reaching net zero on site and reduced their costs for energy usage. You will need to reserve your place for this asap as it will fill up very quickly! Don’t miss out on this series of events, we are already taking reservations in advance of the final confirmation dates. In other news, the team at NWAA have engaged with ADS to launch the start of the new SCS program. The programme is the follow on from SC21 promises to help businesses to understand the customer landscape and expectations of Supply Chain Excellence for the future of sustainability in the industry and will be launched in the summer quarter. At NWAA we have also been listening to you and have taken into consideration the skills gap and the need for additional people embarking on a careers into our industry. With this in mind we have undertaken a contract with IN4 Group. The Manchester based business are delivering Skills boot camp based training programmes to roughly 160 people in areas of digital Skills, Data and Cyber. The candidates are looking to work in the Advanced engineering and manufacturing sectors, particularly around aerospace. Our partnership with IN4 Group will give us the opportunity to help place these candidates firstly in the North West and primarily within our member businesses. We will be helping our members be the first to take the opportunity to meet the candidates as they come through their intensive training and will help to address the skills gaps within your organisations, so get in touch if you are interested in exploring this further.
It’s been another busy and exciting quarter here at North West Aerospace Alliance. The team are busy working with many of our members and have organized a number of fantastic events with equally fantastic speakers. The conference was a huge success and completely sold out for the event in March, with speakers from Spirit AeroSystems (Sir Michael Ryan, Vice President ), GKN (Stephen Cowan, Vice President and GM), Airbus (Helen Swift UK Public Affairs Manager), Rolls Royce (Peter Lord, Director of Quality and HSE), HVM Catapults (Katherine Bennett, CEO) Accenture , (Mike Potter, Principal Director Aerospace and Defence), BAE Systems (Paul Wilde, Head of Tempest and Combat Vehicles - Air), Siemens (Sarah Black Smith, General Manager Motions Controls), Dassault Systemes (Lee Evans UK&I Client Director Aero, Defence, Transport and Mobility), MSP Ltd (Aidan Wigham, Technical Account Manager). It was a day full of talent, knowledge, conversation, introductions and networking from these great individuals, I hope you were lucky enough to attend. The launch of the Sustainability futures ESG series by NWAA started with Safran on 19th May being held on location at their Burnley Nacelles Site. The event was a sell out with many businesses on the wait list for available tickets. The Primes taking part in the ESG Series are working with the NWAA members within their supply chains, helping you to understand what is happening and changing in our industry and how you can start your journey to sustainability, reduce your carbon footprint and your costs to stay ahead of the curve.
04 NWAA & IN4 Group
06 Members’ News
23 Save the date
24 Annual Ball 23
Progress continues to be made on the Lancashire Advanced Engineering and
Manufacturing Watchtower Programme, which is aimed at helping improve competitiveness, resilience, and sustainability and almost fifty companies have now been engaged with on the programme. There is also great work being done by the Sector Growth task force group, which aims to ensure the Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing Sector in the North West is at the forefront of future market opportunities, such as Nuclear and Hydrogen as well as the established sectors, such as Aerospace and Defence and Automotive. The NWAA have also joined forces with IN4 on a programme aimed at developing digital skills in our regional supply chain and working closely with ADS to deliver the new Supply Chain Solutions programme across the North West. These are clearly exciting times in helping drive the Aerospace and Defence Industry in the North West forward.
Paula Gill NWAA Chief Exec
YOUR CONTENT
Prof Andy Schofield NWAA Chairman
Please forward all content for future editions of Plane Talk to our editor at Freshfield, Paul Tustin.
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