After winning the Graham Plumber’s Merchant’s College Refresh Scheme, City College Norwich has upgraded its heating and plumbing training facilities with the £10,000 prize win.
The college has used the prize money to create two new gas training bays, which has significantly improved the delivery of the new L3 Plumbing & Heating Apprenticeship standard and provides the facilities for the college to now begin delivering the L3 Gas Engineering Apprenticeship standard and upcoming T-Levels. City College Norwich also used some of the prize money to replace some older existing equipment.
Products were supplied by Graham Plumber’s Merchant and Worcester Bosch to ensure the prize money went even further.
“The refresh has exceeded all our expectations. Simply seeing the students, staff and industry colleagues working together to deliver, it was inspirational,” said Ed Rose, Director of Higher Education and Apprenticeships at City College Norwich. “The refresh benefits students in a number of ways, not least providing high quality and industry standard training facilities. Seeing such a well-equipped workshop provides further inspiration to students as well, from those starting out at Level 1 through to those considering the next steps. They see the work that has been carried out and identify the potential to replicate that elsewhere.
“The £10,000 reward presents significant funding for our department. We wouldn’t have been able to start our December cohort of students without the workshop being in place and it means we can move forward with our gas engineer focus programme in October. Our students will be thrilled with the new workshop, tools and training we can now offer.”
Sam Canfield, Marketing Manager – Communications at Graham Plumbers’ Merchant, said: “Seeing the impact this investment has already had on the college is inspiring. It’s excellent to see that the first Graham College Refresh Scheme has achieved such excellent results – and the college hasn’t even used all of its prize yet!
“Graham is keen to work with customers and the local community, so it’s important to work with local colleges – especially when it is in an effort to provide support for the training and development of the next generation of Plumbing and Heating Engineers. The scheme has provided the ideal opportunity to do this and we hope it is the first of many.”
“It was clear from the passion of the lecturers at City College Norwich that this investment would make a huge difference to the training standards of the students, which it already has,” said Steve Lister, Sales and Marketing Director at Worcester Bosch. “This investment will ensure that the students graduate with confidence in their skills and the future of the industry.”
