Meeting the urgent need to create a more highly-skilled, effective, agile and connected workforce

Across the next decade and beyond, job occupations previously unheard of will become commonplace – #robotic engineers, data technicians – demanding new and deeper skill sets.

With skills and productivity levels in the South West lagging behind the rest of the UK, there is an urgent need to create a more highly-skilled, effective, agile and connected workforce.

A unique collaboration

The South West’s response to the regional skills agenda is being orchestrated through the new South West Institute of Technology #SWIOT, a unique collaboration between a number of partner organisations, including:

• University of Exeter
• University of Plymouth
• Bridgwater & Taunton College
• City College Plymouth
• Exeter College
• Petroc, and
• Truro & Penwith College

Each investing in the development of state-of-the-art facilities for training in technical subjects to create Britain’s next generation of highly skilled technicians and engineers. A fundamental principle of the SWIOT is close collaboration with some of the region’s foremost employers – Oxygen House, the Met Office, Babcock, and TDK Lambda – all of whom are aligned with the region’s industrial strategy and will lead its strategic direction and focus.

SWIOT will operate as a virtual college

SWIOT will operate as a virtual college, specialising in higher level technical training in subjects such as engineering, digital and construction.

For learners it will offer a myriad of opportunities to enter and progress within the exciting and fast-paced digital, engineering and manufacturing sectors, and to engage with big-name employers, with new Apprenticeship programmes also enabling them to be paid while learning – including to degree level.

For local communities it represents a significant investment in young people’s futures, whilst also attracting new companies and industries to the South West, increasing the opportunities locally for employment in cutting edge technology.

And for the region as a whole, it positions the South West as a leading player within the digital, engineering and manufacturing sectors.

Collaboration is the key

The key to the success of the SWIOT is collaboration – the experience, understanding and insight gained over many years by each of the SWIOT partner organisations enables it to draw on applied research to more quickly identify and tackle employers’ current and future skills gaps.

Further, the provision of industry-standard, specialist training facilities locally means that employers can develop and retain local talent, thereby reducing the need to recruit from outside of the region. It also offers the South West’s existing workforce opportunities to retrain and upskill, whilst also attracting new entrants to the digital, engineering and manufacturing sectors.

Addressing the skills training needs for the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C (HPC) is a key priority for the region where, for example, the demand for skilled specialists in mechanical, electrical, heating and ventilation is set to far outstrip supply.

Within the UK’s 15 operational nuclear power plants, there is adequate experience of shut-down work, but almost zero capacity when it comes to the construction of a new nuclear power plant. Many of the required skills don’t have a training legacy yet – nuclear power plant technology has moved on significantly since the last one was built in the UK – and the workforce is also now required to comply with health & safety and quality assurance expectations that are second to none.

A distinct culture of nuclear ‘behaviours’ has evolved, based on core values of clarity, solidarity, respect, positivity and humility and, together, the SWIOT partner organisations are uniquely placed to recognise the opportunities on offer and to develop the specialist, bespoke training programmes that address the specific need to ‘nuclearise’ entire sectors.

#Budget2020 – £120 million to bring #FE & #HE providers together with employers to open up to eight new Institutes of Technology to deliver high-quality higher level #technical education and to help #LevelUp and close #skills gaps in their local areas. https://t.co/ViBg4BAxwn

— FE News – The #FutureofEducation News Channel (@FENews) March 12, 2020

Keeping ahead of the curve

Located just five miles from HPC, one of the SWIOT anchor partners – Bridgwater & Taunton College (BTC) – has spent the past 10 years investing for HPC ‘ahead of the curve’ and, thanks to public and private investments, now has state-of-the-art training facilities for engineering, civil engineering and nuclear, designed to address the skills needed for major construction projects now and in the future.

Specifically, HPC is going to need welders – lots of them. The UK’s welding, control & instrumentation and commissioning workforce is very small indeed and has an average age of 57, which means thousands more will be lost to retirement in the next few years.

Added to this, a prolonged period of under-investment in the construction industry, coupled with a reluctance to recruit specialist technicians from Europe post-Brexit, means that we are facing something of a crisis – not only for HPC but for other major schemes such as Crossrail, the Thames Tideway and HS2.

Developing a high-quality curriculum

Thus, the College has received SWIOT funding for the creation of a new South West Centre of Excellence for Welding and associated skills, training high integrity welders to standards that meet the requirements of the codes, the regulator and the client and thereby enabling the rigorous quality standards and timescales for large-scale infrastructure projects to be met.

In this it has received excellent support from the Weldability Sif Foundation – a UK-registered charity that facilitates vocational welder training – enabling it to re-fit and re-purpose an existing workshop to accommodate 20 industry-standard welding bays and six Virtuweld VR Welding simulators.

Together with employers within the Mechanical, Electrical, Heating, Ventilation and Air-conditioning (MEH) Joint Venture at HPC – which include EDF Energy, Doosan, Babcock, Boccard, Framatome, CGN, Darchem and Bilfinger – BTC has developed a high-quality curriculum for welding that offers learners sufficient practical experience and arc time whilst also incorporating a VR element that allows for experimentation and safe failure.

The new Welding Centre of Excellence – driven by demand from HPC – delivers best-in-class training with a direct line of sight to real jobs, and will also be a game-changer for the South West’s aerospace, defence and manufacturing industries, delivering an immediate impact to the regional demand for skilled welders and enabling us to become a significant player in the national welding skills landscape.

The Centre is set up to deliver a high-quality experience for learners, with physical welding bays focusing on welding at its most basic level right through to specialist weld procedures at an advanced level, whilst also incorporating familiarisation with the working environment and safety-critical practices.

The programmes on offer include upskilling courses to take existing welders to a higher level, trade testing of skilled and qualified welders prior to site deployment, new Apprenticeship programmes at technical and supervisory levels and behavioural interventions designed to enable employers to embed nuclear culture and behaviours into their site protocols.

Virtual and Augmented reality ‘hands-on’ training

Virtual reality modules sit alongside physical welding exercises, with the workshop also including an area where larger-scale models can be deployed to recreate the workplace, whether a licensed nuclear site or a nuclear submarine.

This blended approach means that BTC can create a multitude of project-based workplace tasks that encourage discovery and experimentation across multiple welding disciplines in complete safety, appealing particularly to those who like to learn by ‘doing’. And by introducing relatively short interventions that can be completed without extended time off work, the courses are potentially accessible to the significant number of workers in the South West who are perceived to be under-qualified, under-employed or under-productive.

The activities of the SWIOT are effectively complemented by the Southern Hub of the National College for Nuclear, which not only develops nuclear-specific competencies, but is also designed to meet wider industry requirements around bespoke engineering, manufacture and fabrication, programme, project and other management disciplines as well as the specific skills sets required for the construction and servicing of a renewed nuclear fleet.

Here, the latest Virtual and Augmented reality is also deployed, essentially meaning people can be trained on a practical level as if they were inside a nuclear power plant, but without the health & safety and security implications.

This ‘hands-on’ training method is proving hugely successful in engaging people who might otherwise shy away from a technical career, particularly learners who are less academic, those from disadvantaged backgrounds and – crucially – females.

In a region that’s experiencing almost full employment, there is an urgent need to widen the net in order to attract a new and sufficiently large workforce for the projects under way.

Changing perceptions to win the hearts and minds of today’s school leavers

But first, there is a job to be done in winning the hearts and minds of today’s school leavers – our technical specialists of the future.

The current perception of welding, for example, as a dark and dangerous occupation is vastly outdated, with safety standards now in place that were unheard of in previous generations. Plus, there are many good reasons to be a welder, not least the fact that they will always be in high demand and earn good money.

Today’s high integrity welder can expect worldwide travel opportunities coupled with a huge variety of work environments – including, perhaps, sub-sea and outer space – as well as progression opportunities into a vast array of occupations, such as robotics, non-destructive testing, inspection, project management and education.

And – something that surely resonates with us all these days – they will also be engaged in an occupation that now has a far less damaging impact on the environment, as the welding workforce migrates from fossil fuel generators and oil rig manufacture to renewable sources of energy.

Louise Rowley, Vice Principal, Bridgwater & Taunton College

Louise Rowley has been a member of the Senior Management team at Bridgwater & Taunton College for nine years. She has an MA in FE Sector Management and over 24 years’ experience within the FE sector.