The Eagle Project is the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s strategic response to fundamental changes in surgical training and practice. It will extend the frontiers of surgical knowledge through the teaching of surgical skills, the advancement and sharing of clinical and teaching knowledge and the promotion of safe surgery. Surgeons need detailed knowledge, manual dexterity, clinical judgement, professionalism and the ability to lead operating teams – skills which 12,000 trainees and surgeons gain annually from expert surgeons on our intensive skills courses. The College provides formal training courses which complement clinical experience gained on hospital wards and in operating theatres. Our intensive hands-on workshops span basic surgical skills courses, for example courses in suturing for early stage trainees, to master classes in neurosurgery for senior consultants. This four-phased project will transform our education facilities into a national centre of excellence for surgical education, training and assessment by 2010. As well as meeting the lifelong training needs of trainees and surgeons in all branches of surgery, the Eagle Project will establish the College as a national and international centre for training other members of the surgical team, including theatre nurses, radiologists and surgical care practitioners. Named after the eagle, the College emblem, this project will see the development of a centre which will become the hub from which we will innovate surgical training programmes to be delivered not only at the College, but also at our 120 regional centres and other remote and international locations. Phase 1-Surgical Skills Workshop: custom-built to address the national shortfall in surgical anatomy training. This will accommodate an additional 600 trainees a year and use, for the first time, fresh-frozen cadavers (made possible under the Human Tissue Act 2006). This phase is complete and training surgeons today. Phase 2-Clinical Skills Unit: containing multimedia facilities such as computer-aided navigation, simulation and robotics. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, the unit will be an invaluable teaching facility for the whole surgical team. Phase 3-Seminar Suite: A flexible teaching area of lecture rooms, seminar suites and assessment areas for classroom teaching in large groups or one-to-one meetings. Phase 4–Resource Centre: accommodating a team of educationalists, course convenors and surgical tutors which will become the hub for (inter)national surgical education and training. The Eagle Project is the College’s response to fundamental and fast-paced changes in the way surgeons will be trained, educated and assessed in the future. The Eagle Project will ensure that surgeons continue to be trained to the highest standards bringing significant benefits to patients, surgeons and the wider medical community.