QA opens Europe’s largest corporate tech training campus in London

A multi £million training campus for the world’s top #tech hub

As seen at last week’s World Economic Forum, reskilling, upskilling and redeployment is becoming critical for businesses and governments to ensure their workforce can cope with the change in certain jobs driven by AI and creation of others.

As the UK prepares to leave Europe on Friday, all eyes will be on how the country can win the talent and innovation war.

In aid to help this reskilling, QA, the UK’s leading Tech skills organisation has opened Europe’s largest tech training campus for the world’s top tech hub – central London.

The multi-million pound campus is set to aid the learning of over 3,500 people a week, providing training across the full employee lifecycle – from tech gurus to those just starting out.

The secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Nicky Morgan said:

“We are determined to maintain our position as one of the world’s most dynamic tech hubs and I welcome QA’s new specialist digital skills training campus. The centre will give people of all abilities the chance to get specialist technology training and play an important role in making sure our digital economy continues its incredible growth.”

QA, the UK’s leading tech skills organisation, has opened Europe’s largest tech training campus – in central London. Reflecting the confidence QA has in both Britain and its booming tech sector, the campus will offer world-class training in a world-class city and will further reinforce London’s dominance of excellence in tech. The CVC-backed skills business has made the multi-million pound investment in the London site as a response to rising demand for digital skills training in the UK.

“QA helps British business win in the digital revolution” said Paul Geddes, Group CEO of QA.

“We are investing in London because we are confident that the city will continue to be a major global tech hub.  Training and skills are the key to the continuing growth of this sector.”

In 2019, London was named the top tech hub in the world – attracting more than £864m worth of tech projects from overseas investors. The opening of a training campus of this size is essential to support the continued success of the tech and digital sector for the UK.

Geddes, former CEO of Direct Line Group, made the move to QA based on UK tech’s predominance globally.  His vision for QA is to support the UK tech sector, allowing companies to benefit from this boom and to guide them through the complex and ever-changing labyrinth of opportunity that tech offers them and their workforce.

“This is more than just a campus” added Geddes.

“It is an innovation powerhouse that will rapidly equip UK workers with skills for technological advancement. It will help us continue to transform the careers of thousands of people in the UK, and plug the well- publicised tech skills gap UK businesses are facing.”

In excess of 700 delegates a day will attend the campus every working week. It will provide training across the full employee lifecycle – from tech gurus to those just starting out. There will also be a number of tech retraining programmes and youth engagement projects running out of the site.

These initiatives – such as the QA Stemettes Agile Academy – intend to encourage a broad range of diverse talent to consider a career in tech and ensure that the UK’s tech talent pipeline continues to grow and develop in line with demand.

The extended campus has a bold and modern design teamed with state-of-the-art technical teaching rooms. This includes 74 Attend-from-Anywhere smart classrooms – which utilise the latest in video technology to enable delegates from anywhere in the world to attend learning sessions, collaborating and contributing as if they were there in person.

Another key feature of the site is its immersive cyber lab simulation suite which allows learners to simulate and react to a real life cyber threat in a secure physical environment. It has been designed to facilitate practical hands-on learning for teams to rehearse incident response, conduct digital forensic investigations and create ‘offensive defences’.