Siemens and Trafford College have partnered to launch a skills and apprenticeship partnership in order to help tackle the region’s engineering skills shortage. The partnership will see students from across the North West train at the new Centre for Science and Technology which has received over £15m of new investment, equipped with a Siemens lab in order to help engineering apprentices across a number of businesses to become qualified and employed in the sector.

Siemens has supplied the college with cutting edge industrial technologies and 12 apprentices will train at the college focusing on electrical engineering. The college has opened a new lab which has been installed with Siemens ‘programmable logic controllers’ which are designed to help young people learn about factory automation.

The partnership is part of Siemens’ successful bid for the Employer Ownership of Skills Pilot, which seeks to help employers train young people while encouraging further education. The engineering company will be working with their solution provider partners in the area of apprenticeship provision to generate the appropriate skills for the sector and will claim assistance for learners for the management of the scheme, college and specialised technical training course costs.

Siemens will run the apprenticeship scheme on behalf of its customers and partners which include Bilfinger, Boulting Group, Cleveland Systems, and the Siemens Glass Academy launched with British Glass last year

The first apprentices started at the beginning of September and the partnership has flourished; one of the partner SMEs, Applied Integration, is a key supplier to the BAE systems astute class submarine program. Siemens Rail Systems based in Ardwick, Siemens Industry based in Didsbury and Siemens Electrium based in Wythenshaw will be taking on apprentices who will study at the college.