City College Norwich has upgraded its heating and plumbing training facilities after winning £10,000 prize from Graham Plumber’s Merchant’s College Refresh Scheme.
The college has used the prize money to create two new gas training bays, which have 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 re-fresh 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 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!”