RICS Award for Hitachi Rail Europe

Hitachi Rail Europe's Newton Aycliffe assembly and manufacturing plant has been named 'Project of the Year' at this year's RICS Awards, North East, which celebrate inspirational land, property and construction initiatives across eight categories.

Winners

The winners of all eight individual categories who were announced to 300 local property professionals by host and veteran BBC TV news presenter, Alex Lovell, are:

• Building Conservation - The Boiler House, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Commercial - Wylam Brewery, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Community Benefit - Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre, Morpeth
• Design through Innovation - Urban Sciences Building, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Infrastructure - Killingworth & Longbenton Surface Water Management Scheme, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Regeneration - Hitachi Rail Europe, Darlington
• Residential - The Maltings, Northumberland
• Tourism & Leisure - Wylam Brewery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Project of the Year, North East

The highly acclaimed 'Project of the Year, North East' accolade is presented to the category winner that demonstrates overall outstanding best practice and an exemplary commitment to adding value to its local area.

The title went to the Hitachi Rail Europe (HRE) plant at the Merchant Place site, after scooping the regeneration accolade on the night. Not only does the facility build and deliver a new generation of high speed passenger trains, it also provides an important import and export facility and has helped return train manufacturing back to the North East.

The project - delivered by Merchant Place Developments, Shepherd Construction and Ryder Architecture - aimed to create 700 jobs, but this has been surpassed with over 1,200 directly employed by HRE, and a further 8,000 further jobs created within the supply chain.

"Hitachi Rail Europe is a stand-out Project of the Year winner as not only has it brought valuable employment opportunities to the area, it has also acted as a catalyst for significant further regeneration at a regional level and scale. Most recently, the University Technical College was established by Sunderland University to support the rail facility, and this has created an additional 600 opportunities and jobs for young apprentices, which will help towards improving the skills levels throughout the region." (Adam Serfontein, Chair of the judging panel for the RICS Awards, and Managing Director of Hanro Group).

RICS Awards Grand Final, 2018

All category winners will go on to compete against other regional winners at the national RICS Awards Grand Final on 2 November 2018 in London, for the chance to be crowned the overall UK winner in their respective category.