From education to employment

A Plumb Job

Rob Hutchinson and Josh Wilkinson with the winning circuit

A plumbing student from East Durham College has recently won the North East Inter-College Plumbing Competition Final 2017.

Josh Wilkinson, 17, from Hartlepool, emerged victorious from an extremely close final, which took place last week at East Durham College’s Technical Academy in Peterlee.

Josh and fellow EDC student Kyle McCullough, 17, from Houghton-le-Spring, who are both studying on a Level 2 EAL Diploma in Plumbing and Heating, took on their counterparts who travelled over from Bishop Auckland College.

The competition task was to build a complex watertight pipe circuit. The students had 4-hours to complete the brief and their work was scored based on dimensional accuracy, pipework joints, soldering, clip spacing, machine pipe bending accuracy and the circuit’s watertight performance.

The standard of work produced by all four finalists was extremely high and EDC lecturer, Tim Beasley, said: “I was very impressed with the attitude and work produced by all of the competitors.

“It was a very close fought contest with only two points separating them all, but Josh emerged as the winner being the only competitor to achieve a fully watertight pipe circuit.

“Congratulations to Josh, and everyone should be very proud of their performances today. They are an absolute credit to their respective colleges.”

The competition, which is part of a series of inter-college competitions in a number of different vocational disciplines that have been taking place during the year around our region, was designed to challenge the students’ practical skills and help to increase their confidence in their own ability.

Rob Hutchinson, Centre Manager at The Technical Academy, added: “Well done to all the entrants!

“As you can see from the scoring this was an extremely close competition. The standard of work produced was fantastic.

“The students all seemed to have enjoyed the experience and I’m sure will have gained confidence from taking part in the event.


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