The official opening of Energy Coast UTC’s brand new engineering workshops took place on Thursday 21st November with Chair of governors, Barbara Stephens doing the honours by cutting the ribbon.
Employer partners, governors, staff, students, parents, and local stakeholders were thrilled with the state of the art facilities.
With sterling support from sponsors Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the University of Cumbria, the workshops are for the exclusive use of UTC staff and students and include state of the art, industry standard machinery such as XYZ 3m bed CNC and manual lathes and milling machines.
Energy Coast UTC Principal and CEO, Cherry Tingle, said she was, “delighted that students now have exclusive use of new, industry standard equipment on a daily basis”. She added that,
“This fantastic facility to benefit west Cumbrian students is just the first step in the UTC development of expanding workshop facilities for West Cumbria. Watch this space for a multi -million pound build with numerous engineering and construction workshops and CAD /CAM facilities starting soon on the UTC site.”
Barbara Stephens commented on the hard work of all of those involved. “I particularly want to pay tribute to Cherry and her team who have worked tremendously hard to get this going. It’s involved hours and hours of discussions with the Department for Education and the Education Skills Funding Agency who I would also like to thank for their support.”
Fully operational since September students have been embracing the high tech equipment, learning new skills and gearing up for future success.
“The new workshops are something we’ve been looking forward to for a very long time,” says Ian Russell (Vice Principal, Curriculum and Standards). “It’s been an accumulation of 18 months of negotiation, hard work and building to get to the point where we now have state-of-the-art facilities for all of our students. They are set out to mimic apprenticeship providers which gives our students an edge on the competition and allows them to integrate into apprenticeships more easily.”
