Aberdeen-headquartered 3t Training Services, an energy-sector training provider, has landed a £200,000 grant to help create additional training capacity for under-served areas of the engineering construction industry (ECI).
The grant, from the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board’s (ECITB) £1 million fund designated for regional skills hubs, will help the firm build three mobile units for delivering training in regions currently suffering from insufficient provision for upskilling workers on major ECI projects.
3t Training Services will itself invest £160,000 to build the units and an additional £120,000 a year towards running costs.
The units will deliver ECITB-approved courses in mechanical fitting, pipefitting and plating to ECI employers across the country and are expected to enable hundreds of new entrants to enter the industry. 3t anticipates that the new training units will be deployed in north-east Scotland, north-west England, Derbyshire, Humberside and Teesside.
“Our customers operate across various regions, and their training needs can fluctuate based on the projects they’re involved in,” said Paul Knowles, VP of training at 3t. “By developing mobile training units we’re able to respond more effectively to local demand, providing tailored solutions that meet employers’ needs wherever their projects take them.”
According to ECITB, the industry could need thousands of additional workers for major projects over the coming years.
Andrew Hockey, ECITB’s chief executive, said that not only would the mobile units help meet geographically fluctuating training demand, but also that they will support disadvantaged groups to find a route into sustainable employment within the ECI.
ECITB regional skills hubs funding is designed to boost training provider capacity and grow new entrant numbers in industrial cluster hotspots and other major engineering construction centres to help address skills shortages in the industry. Grants of between £50,000 and £500,000 are available to ECI projects that meet set criteria.
3t Training Services has eight training centres across the UK and more than 35 years of experience working with global energy sector organisations.
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