Apprentices Shine At Crossrail Awards

A record number of Laing O’Rourke candidates were nominated at Crossrail’s annual apprentice awards this year, with two of them securing recognition.

It’s the third year running that Laing O’Rourke apprentices and their supporters have been recognised under the annual event and the company’s impressive showing saw Katie Kelleher and Ashley Swaby scoop top awards, with Ben Lewis highly commended.

Katie, a lifting technician apprentice for Select Plant Hire clinched the Intermediate Infrastructure Apprentice of the Year award, whilst Ben, a steel fixing apprentice, was highly commended in the same category. Meanwhile, senior procurement manager, Ashley, was named Apprenticeship Advocate of the Year.

Katie joined the Tottenham Court Road team following successful completion of her NVQ 2 for crawler cranes as well as initial training on tower cranes, mobile cranes, mini cranes and slinger signalling. Having previously worked in recruitment, the new challenge is suiting Katie well. Since starting on site she has worked as part of the crawler crane team at the Western Ticket hall.

Ben started on the Liverpool Street site as a steel fixer apprentice.

Ashley Swaby, Advocate of the Year was recognised for her provision of end-to-end support to apprentices.

Laing O’Rourke operations director, Steve Jones who leads the company’s Crossrail projects said: ‘Congratulations to all of our apprentices who were nominated for these awards, you are all a shining example for our company. Being recognised by Crossrail for the value we place on apprentices and the detailed support we provide to our apprentice schemes across the business is fantastic.

Seeing two apprentices singled out on two new apprenticeships that were launched to tackle key skills shortages in the industry demonstrates the success and the wide-reaching benefits of these schemes. Apprentices add a fresh dynamic to our sites and provide our most experienced people with the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience, to develop the future of our business.’

Read more:

Katie Kelleher urges other women to consider a career in construction

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