Green agenda and innovation pave way for new era at LCB

LOOK around Leeds and you would be hard-pressed to find a building constructed in the last 50 years that hasn't been touched by students from Leeds College of Building.
Future proofing: Ian Billyard, centre, with students at Leeds College of Buildings recently completed £17m campus.Future proofing: Ian Billyard, centre, with students at Leeds College of Buildings recently completed £17m campus.
Future proofing: Ian Billyard, centre, with students at Leeds College of Buildings recently completed £17m campus.

Students past and present have been involved in some of its biggest construction projects, helping to shape the city’s skyline.

Students are currently working on the £165m Victoria Gate shopping centre and will also be part of the £400m Kirkstall Forge scheme.

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“We often say we have built Leeds”, says Ian Billyard, college principal and president of the Yorkshire Builders Federation. “It’s very rare that we go on to a site and find we aren’t involved.”

Students have also worked on some of the country’s most prestigious projects, including the London 2012 Olympic Park.

And if the proposed nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset goes ahead, the college has been approached to supply apprentices for the £18bn project.

Leeds College of Building, the only specialist further education construction college in the UK, is currently undertaking its own construction challenge: reorganising its seven sites into two campuses in Hunslet and North Street.

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Last year it opened its new £17m Hunslet campus and in March council leaders approved a £14m package to support the creation of another new building at the site.

It is estimated that the work will allow the college, which has a turnover of £16m, to cater for an extra 190 students.

The second building will be named Joseph Aspdin, after the bricklayer from Hunslet who invented and obtained the patent for Portland cement in 1824.

With construction employment in Yorkshire and the Humber expected to reach 200,000 in the next five years and innovations in technology and new ways of working leading to a need for new skills, the college is stepping up to the challenge of creating the builders of the future.

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The new buildings are a huge part of that alongside new higher apprenticeships.

“We are creating flexible space to provide new courses to meet the needs of the industry,” said Mr Billyard.

Students can choose from over 200 courses.

Traditional apprenticeships such as plumbing, plastering and electrical are still the college’s most popular courses.

The most in-demand trade within the industry at the moment is bricklaying, which is linked to the steady growth in private house building. Anecdotal evidence suggests that wages for these tradespeople have soared to an average of £1,000 a week in Yorkshire.

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However, the new wave of higher apprenticeships, which give students a qualification equivalent to an A-level or degree, are paving the way for a new era.

Subjects include the Government’s first transport planning apprenticeship, which will start in September. It will also offer apprenticeships under the Government’s Trailblazer project, which aims to deliver higher apprenticeships in information technology and science, engineering and maths.

The Construction Industry Training Board forecasts show that the industry needs to fill 232,000 new jobs in the next five years to deliver the current pipeline of work.

In addition more than 400,000 skilled workers will hit retirement age in the next decade and will need to be replaced.

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“We are adding newer technical and professional apprenticeships as well as courses around the green agenda,” said Mr Billyard.

The college is also building on its number of female students. There were over 500 female enrolments last year.

The college’s new campuses will act as a showcase for environmental features, including solar panels, ground source heat pumps and rainwater harvesting to demonstrate the technology to students.

One of its key tasks is to equip its students with the skills and knowledge to survive future recessions. “This is about attracting and then training people with the skills that are required both right now and in the future,” says Mr Billyard. “It goes back to the flexible space, delivering new qualifications which will meet the changing needs of the industry and not just sticking to what we have done in the past.”