Refurbishment contract will safeguard jobs at Siemens

May 28 2009 by Dan Warburton, The Journal

Once the famous Parsons factory, the Siemens site on Shields Road, Heaton, has shrunk since it was first built their 125 years ago. At its peak, Parsons employed 12,000 staff and the company covered more than 26 acres to build steam turbine generators.

But despite scaling down to a fifth of the size of the original site, a number of imminent multi-million contracts are likely to bolster the company’s future.

Last night Richard Llewellyn, station manager at Didcot B, said: “Didcot B is a highly efficient, gas-burning power station that uses some of the latest generating technology.

“It operates four combined cycle gas turbines, two of which will be shut down for ‘mid-life refurbishment’ at which point they will have clocked up the equivalent of 100,000 operating hours.

“We began planning with Siemens for this project back in late 2007.”

In addition to the latest refurbishment contract, Siemens is to manufacture a spare generator rotor and long term storage container at Didcot B.