Multi-million transport design centre set for Coventry University

A NEW multi-million pound centre of design excellence to support UK innovation in the transport industry is set to be built at Coventry University.

The new centre, which will play a key role in meeting the shortfall in creative skills, will open in 2017.

The announcement of the National Transport Design Centre (NTDC) comes as a new report from the Automotive Council UK identifies the need for improved education provision for the vehicle design sector, where there is high demand for creative roles such as modellers.
 
The NTDC, which will be built on Coventry University’s Technology Park and forms a key part of the university’s existing Centre for Mobility and Transport, has received £7m from the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership, through the government’s Local Growth Deal.

State-of-the-art features at the new centre will include:
  a six-metre interactive power wall which allows users to explore detailed design and engineering concepts in virtual reality;
  advanced clay milling facilities for creating physical models of vehicles;
  a projection mapping system which can cast digital images onto 3D objects below, helping designers to assess how multiple options would appear on full-scale models.
 
The centre is set to address many of the Automotive Council report’s recommendations, with key areas of focus including undergraduate and postgraduate education in transport design, research projects in collaboration with industry, and support for the UK’s high-value manufacturing sector and its supply chain to improve design capability.
 
According to the report – entitled The Value of Design in the UK Automotive Sector – there are currently only four universities in the UK (including Coventry) teaching transport design at undergraduate or postgraduate level, despite recent and significant growth in both the British car industry and the country’s design economy.
 
David Wright, director of strategic initiatives at Coventry University, said: “In a global transport industry that is increasingly seeing cost-saving engineering collaborations between competitors, design remains one of the most important ways manufacturers can make themselves stand out.
 
“Britain, and indeed Coventry as a city, has always been a leader in this field, but what is clear from the Automotive Council’s latest report is that creative skills like design and modelling will soon be in short supply if an ageing workforce retires without capable graduates and trainees coming through.”
 
He said the university’s aim was to meet the skills shortfall by developing a range of new courses and research programmes. The new facility will also be open to companies in the transport sector – automotive, rail, aerospace or marine – and they will be encouraged to work with students.
 
Jonathan Browning, chairman of the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP, said the new centre offered many advantages to the area.
 
“It underlines Coventry and Warwickshire’s place at the forefront of cutting-edge transport research and development and design, and is another example of the area’s world class ability to combine creative and technical skills to stimulate further investment in the future of our economy,” he said.

On a different level, he said it would cement the already strong links between the area’s universities and industry.