A FORMER high school student from Worcester has played an important part in the £895m redevelopment of Reading Station.

Jess Hemming, who attended Nunnery Wood High and is now a senior quantity surveyor with professional services consultancy Rhead Group, helped Network Rail and lead contractor Costain agree various final accounts.

As one of only six women who worked on the project site in the past year, Ms Hemming was among 100 railway workers pictured with The Queen at the station's official opening recently. After high school, she went to Wolverhampton University and now lives in Whitewood Way, Worcester

She said: "I was very proud to represent both Rhead Group and the many women working in construction at the official opening of Reading Station. I worked on final agreement of the accounts for the £20m mechanical and engineering, £3m structures and £9m cladding projects at the end of this five year build. I have been a qualtity surveyor for more than 10 years and now I’m enjoying training younger people coming into the profession. Sadly we still don’t get too many women joining the industry, which is a great shame as I can highly recommend it. Working on projects like Reading station is really rewarding."

Used by nearly 20 million passengers a year, Reading station is one of the busiest rail hubs in Britain. Over the last five years it has been rebuilt as part of a £895m project to improve the railway around Reading, removing one of the worst bottlenecks on the network and improving reliability and increasing capacity so more trains can run.

The bigger, better station – completed a year ahead of schedule and within budget – now has two entrances, 15 platforms – five of them new platforms, new retail facilities and a new passenger bridge three times the size of the original footbridge.

All platforms have new lifts, escalators and canopies making the station more accessible, lighter and brighter and better able to accommodate the growing number of passengers. By 2030, a forecasted 30 million people will use the station each year.