Thursday, November 14, 2024

New £500,000 centre at Northampton College to tackle green construction skills shortage

Northampton College will tackle the UK’s acute shortage of construction workers with up-to-date ‘green skills’ head on with the opening of a £500,000 renewable energies education and training facility.

The new Green Skills Centre at Booth Lane will provide up to 250 students with daily access to the latest green technologies each year, reskill adults who want to move into the construction industry and upskill existing professionals in the sector.

It will also support a variety of green initiatives run by Northampton College, such as the Big Rig Low Carbon Challenge, which promotes sustainable construction careers to secondary school students across the county.

Designed by decarbonisation specialist and renewable training provider Quantum, the centre features rigs and bays for air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, solar PV, solar thermal, wind generation, electrification of vehicles and EV charging and promotes sustainable construction methods and materials.

Students will receive training on top-of-the-range low carbon technologies such as Daikin air source heat pumps.

Deputy Principal Patrick Leavey said: “We tasked Quantum with creating one of the best renewable technology centres in the country for us and they haven’t disappointed.

“This incredible facility will support the UK’s targets around carbon reduction and help to address the acute skills shortages within construction personnel to meet the rising demand for green technologies.

“This is a fantastic resource for Northamptonshire and the region and will strengthen the area’s construction and built environment workforce by providing them with specialist green construction skills which are needed across the UK.”

Construction Curriculum Manager Mark Bradshaw added: “The technology in our Green Skills Centre is highly sophisticated and we’re replicating the best contemporary professional practices there to help our region get to net zero.

“With support from Castle Climate Control and Thorn Electrical we’ll be offering master classes, we’re developing a range of competency and licence-to-practice courses in various green technologies and we’re also creating a sustainability course.”

The new facility, which is next to the College’s existing Advanced Construction Engineering Centre, will also be used to support an ongoing partnership Northampton College has with the University of Northampton to research efficient design and implementation of low carbon adoption.

Green skills was identified as a priority skills development area within the Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP), with the centre partially funded with support from the Local Skills Improvement Fund (LSIF).

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our news site - please take a moment to read this important message:

As you know, our aim is to bring you, the reader, an editorially led news site and magazine but journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them.

With the Covid-19 pandemic having a major impact on our industry as a whole, the advertising revenues we normally receive, which helps us cover the cost of our journalists and this website, have been drastically affected.

As such we need your help. If you can support our news sites/magazines with either a small donation of even £1, or a subscription to our magazine, which costs just £33.60 per year, (inc p&P and mailed direct to your door) your generosity will help us weather the storm and continue in our quest to deliver quality journalism.

As a subscriber, you will have unlimited access to our web site and magazine. You'll also be offered VIP invitations to our events, preferential rates to all our awards and get access to exclusive newsletters and content.

Just click here to subscribe and in the meantime may I wish you the very best.









Latest news

Related news

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close