The West Midlands Growth Company (WMGC) is a partnership between the Local Enterprise Partnerships, local authorities, Growth Hubs, universities and a wide range of businesses across the private sector who have come together to help the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom make its mark, nationally and internationally. They support the delivery of the West Midlands Combined Authority’s Local Industrial Strategy – working to increase jobs, businesses and productivity in the region.
SFA worked with Stephanie Mynett, the Visitor Economy Business Development Manager at the Convention Bureau of the WMGC in 2019. They conducted a bespoke research project to provide them with some in depth data analysis on potential future business events. They investigated the regions’ sector strengths and unique assets – in terms of research, academia and industry – and matched these to potential conferences for the region, analysing and interrogating this information in order to present WMGC with some evidence based data on where to focus their efforts in terms of targeting international conferences. WMGC continue to progress and make good use of the information provided and have found the research extremely valuable. Not only has it helped them to bid for and win conferences, it has also complimented their overall Business Development activity in terms of their Ambassador programme, sales missions (virtual or in person) and hosted buyer activities. The data contributes to their overall tourism strategy, enabling them to raise the profile of their USPs, their research institutes and innovation hub and the West Midlands region overall – all of which creates the right conditions for inward investment.
The Conference: World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR) 2022
WCRR was founded by SNCF (France), DB AG (Germany), Trenitalia (Italy), RTRI (Japan), RSSB (UK), TTCI (USA) and UIC. As the flagship international congress on railway research, WCRR 2022 will bring together the global community to learn, share, collaborate and innovate. Organised by RSSB, University of Birmingham and the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) the 2022 WCRR will champion technical development, accelerate and enable the adoption of new approaches and technologies, advocate collaboration and inspire the next generation of rail professionals. It typically attracts around 1,000 international delegates.
Why Birmingham?
Birmingham is vibrant city in the heart of England, full of confidence, world famous culture, cuisine and entrepreneurial spirit. It is a short 1 hour 20 minutes by train from London and Birmingham Airport is just 10 minutes from the city centre and offers more than 200 direct and connecting flights. But most importantly Birmingham has the largest university-based centre for railway research and education in Europe, developing world-leading new technologies alongside renowned higher education programmes. We are part of the UK Rail Research Innovation Network (UKRRIN) and lead the Centre of Excellence in Digital Systems.
One of the examples of the bids that WMGC were able to work on as a result of the data from SFA was the WCRR. As soon as they saw this one on the priority list, they knew they had a good story to tell. Also, they had the relationship with the potential local host institute identified (the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education) and they already knew they could work in collaboration with their inward invest capital attraction team on this. The conference was the perfect match for their region.
“Our story is that we are deep rooted in manufacturing and the railway industry. It is a core part of our history, our contribution to the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and it is still remains very much part of our DNA today – we are at the heart of the HS2 with the national college for high speed rail training and rail engineers of the future – and the BCRRE is set to unite existing academic and industry capabilities to innovate and support transformational change within the rail and technology sector globally. This particular facility is developing new initiatives to offer state of the art project labs and proof of concept testing facilities. The World Congress on Railway Research will help us to highlight this world class research and development especially around decarbonisation, a longer term objective for whole of UK. It will also allow us to unveil the UKs first Hydroden powered train.”
