Walsall College announces £300,000 investment in new engineering skills facility

WALSALL College has announced a £300,000 capital investment to create a new Engineering Manufacturing Workshop.
 
Work on the 2,744 sq ft facility, situated at the front of Green Lane Campus, is due to begin this month and should be completed by July ready for an official launch at the start of the new term in September.

It is hoped the facility will help to redress growing concerns about the mounting skills shortage in the engineering and manufacturing sectors.

College bosses have said the new engineering facility will hopefully reinvigorate engineering in the Black Country and help to provide a new pool of skilled labour for busy firms.

The college currently supports over 80 engineering apprentices and the new workshop will allow further expansion of this. It is developing the new facility after outgrowing provision at its existing workshop, based at the Black Country University Technical College (UTC).
 
A capital investment of around £300,000 is being made and the refurbished space will be equipped with the very latest engineering technology and equipment designed to provide students with the right kind of skills.

Remedial works and electrical connections will be carried out by external contractors but the revamp and installation work will be completed by around 25 carpentry and painting & decorating students as part of their work experience programme.
 
Once opened, it will cater for Level 1 multiskilled engineering operatives, Level 2 and 3 engineering, manufacturing and maintenance apprentices and Level 4 HNC students and higher apprentices.

The college is working in partnership with local and regional manufacturing companies to deliver the project and the workshop will specialise in basic hand skills, milling, turning and surface grinding as well as electrical engineering, computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D modelling using Softworks.
 
The new workshop will offer students from Walsall and surrounding areas, as well as those at the Black Country UTC, progression into apprenticeships and higher education at Walsall College.
 
Neil Sambrook, the college’s Head of Curriculum Cluster for Construction, Engineering and Science, said: “The new Engineering and Manufacturing Workshop at Green Lane will reintroduce and reinvigorate the Engineering curriculum offer in the Black Country.

“The project aims to support regional engineering and manufacturing employers’ requirements to take students from the most basic level of hand tool use through to higher level apprenticeship study. The investment by the College will address much needed skills shortages and also criticisms by some engineering firms that young people are not equipped with the basic motor skills after leaving school.”
 
James Norris, Assistant Principal for Commercial Development at Walsall College, said the scheme was an important step in the college’s aim to becoming a skills leader in engineering.