We were delighted to launch our eighth UK site in October, as we officially opened our latest facility in Newcastle. At the opening event attended by community, government and industry leaders, including the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Leonardo UK Chair and CEO, Clive Higgins, spoke about the opportunity that the new site will give us to hire talent from across the North East.
Located in the ‘Spark’ building, part of the state-of-the-art ‘Helix’ development, Leonardo Newcastle will focus on the research, development and prototyping of our next generation sensing, security and vertical lift products, many of which will incorporate emerging digital and data technologies.
We also celebrated diversity across our company throughout October, marking Black History Month (BHM) with events and seminars for Leonardo colleagues hosted across our UK sites. At the start of the month, three of our senior leaders spoke about why they were taking part in a reverse mentoring programme in partnership with the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK). The programme would see mentors from AFBE-UK spend six months in dialogue with our leaders discussing barriers to recruitment, and how to continue to increase inclusion across the company. As the month came to a close, members of our Ethnicity Inclusion network group shared their stories in personal accounts about what BHM means to them.
At the end of the month, Leonardo apprentice Jainna Bhalla, Vice Chair of the Ethnicity Inclusion network group, won the Judge’s Choice category at the Multicultural Apprenticeship Awards.
There was further cause for celebration in October, as a team of apprentices from our Luton site won this year's IMechE Apprentice Automation Challenge, becoming the fourth consecutive winning team from Leonardo. They impressed the judges with their automated walking stick equipped with lights and sensors to provide support and detect falls.
Members of our Pride network group then attended the inaugural LGBTQ+ Defence Awards, where it was highly commended in the Network of the Year category. Alongside this, Pride network Chair, Ivy Speight, was shortlisted as Inspiration of the Year.
At their annual awards dinner, Leonardo helicopter trainees based at our Yeovil site handed over a cheque for more than £22,000 to their chosen charity, PROMISEworks. The trainees raised money for this local charity, which supports disadvantaged children and young people across the Somerset region, through events such as the Yeovil Half Marathon, festivals and on-site bucket collections.
This came at the same time that we celebrated 75 years of rotary wing flight at our site in Yeovil, the Home of British Helicopters. In October 1948, the first Westland-built helicopter, the WS-51, took to the skies; it would become the Dragonfly – the first of many iconic helicopters built there.
Finally, on International Coming Out Day, Leonardo Senior Systems Engineer, Thaniel Walker, shared their thoughts on the act of 'coming out'.