Bengaluru, NFAPost: With an aim to widen employment opportunities for youth of Andhra Pradesh, Alstom has started training of the first batch of Young Diploma engineers, in collaboration with Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC).
Under the SKILL AP initiative by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, this program will upskill 30 diploma engineers from across the state and make them industry-ready, at the APSSDC training centre in Sricity.
Launch of the pilot batch started exclusively for Alstom, was attended by Special Chief Secretary Department of Skill Development centre Anantha Ramu IAS, Nellore Distric Collector & District Magistrate Nellore District KV Chakradhar Babu IAS, APSSDC Chairman Challa Madusudhan Reddy, APSSDC MD & CEO IRTS Arja Srikanth and Alstom Sri City Site MD Vijay Subramanian. The officials also visited Alstom’s Sricity facility to know about the factory operations and understand more about the training module.
Manufacturing facility
Alstom India & South Asia Managing Director Alain SPOHR said Alstom’s Sricity factory is a state-of-the-art rolling stock manufacturing facility for us in the Asia-Pacific region, where technically advanced metro trainsets are being developed for Indian and international customers.
“We applaud APSSDC’s efforts in curating this program, and are happy to onboard some of these young minds”, said Alstom India & South Asia Managing Director Alain SPOHR.
The 45-day training program will include classroom trainings on Technical skills, Employee health & Safety (EHS), Quality fundamentals, Railway safety, as well as an introduction to Alstom’s operations. In addition, the trainees will attend several sessions on improving interpersonal & communication skills, time management, and personality development, delivered by APSSDC trainers.
Job opportunity
This will be followed by an ‘on-the-job’ training on the shop floor for a period of one month. Post this, the participants will be assessed, and suitable ones will be shortlisted for a job opportunity at Alstom. The company is also looking forward to engaging with 50 more diploma engineers through this program by March 2021.
Alstom has established a strong presence in India. With more than 5700 full times employees, and in line with Government’s Make-in-India’ initiative, Alstom has been investing heavily in the country to deliver world class rolling stock, research & development and components to not only serve the domestic market, but also rest of the world.
The company has four industrial sites in the states of Bihar (Madhepura), Andhra Pradesh (SriCity), Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore) and West Bengal (Kolkata). India also houses in Karnataka (Bangalore), the largest Engineering centre for Alstom, outside of France. Additionally, Alstom has localised sourcing and supply chain, to the extent that most projects are close to 80% built from indigenous materials.
Domestic project
As part of the domestic project pipeline, Alstom has manufactured and supplied rolling stock to Chennai Metro, Kochi Metro, Lucknow Metro and Mumbai Metro L3 (Ongoing). The company has also undertaken Signalling, Telecom and Power supply projects for various metro corporations including – Delhi, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Chennai Kochi, Mumbai L2 & 7, Jaipur, Nagpur etc.
The rolling stock (metro train) manufacturing facility in SriCity, also manufactures for export projects. It has delivered successfully for Sydney Metro and is currently building trains for the city of Montreal (Canada), Sydney (Australia) extension and Perth (Australia).
Until recently, Indian Railways has been extremely independent and never had joint ventures for its large projects. Signing a partnership with Alstom in 2015 marked the beginning of a new era for Indian Railways. The contract worth €3.5 billion includes manufacturing of 800 double-section 12000-horsepower electric locomotives for freight service and associated maintenance for a period of 11 years.
The project envisions to create more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. The electric locomotives are being built in one of India’s largest integrated greenfield manufacturing facilities at Madhepura in Bihar. Spread across 250 acres, with a production capacity of 120 locomotives per annum, this industrial site is built to international standards of safety & quality.
Maintenance depots
As per plan, two ultra-modern maintenance depots in Saharanpur and Nagpur will ensure high service availability of the locomotives. The Saharanpur depot is already functional and the Nagpur one is under construction. Equipped with ultramodern features, these depots will play a critical role in maintaining India’s most advanced freight locomotives at significantly lower costs.
Currently, Alstom has delivered 30 units of electric locomotives, inspite of the pandemic situation. As per plan, we will deliver 75 units in FY 20/21. Starting next fiscal, we will deliver 100 units annually.
Alstom is also executing electrification, signalling and telecommunications system for over 343 km along the Eastern phase of the ambitious Dedicated Freight Corridor which is a key step in transforming the freight services in the country.
As part of the contract, Alstom is building the sub-stations and providing the control centre. The control centre situated at Allahabad is one of the world’s largest Operations Control Centres for Railways. The Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) will not just enable safer and timely movement of freight across the country but will also reduce the traffic on the corridor for passenger trains.
