Great Yarmouth College students benefit from Christmas gift from Lintott Jamie Thums from Lintott and Michael Stow from Siemens attended GYC recently to present them with a Programmable Logic Controller. Siemens have kindly donated the equipment and Lintott will be donating training as the college would like to provide staff and students the opportunity to work with latest technology. At this stage the college has received a starter kit. Jamie explained that it is the latest industrial control and being of modular design can simply be expanded to suit its application. Staff have been left with the task of devising some projects that will include use of the kit. Jamie is thrilled to be supporting the college, he explained “It’s our way of providing students with real life experience, exposure to the real-life application and training from engineers that use top rated kit day in and day out. What’s more the scalable kit means that students can learn small scale on a starter module and build up – just as we do in industry” Jamie was keen to stress how he hopes this is just the beginning of a long term relationship with GYC – starting with hardware and training. Lintott are offering the college as much training as they need as well as supporting design software! Jamie explained what is driving this initiative is the need for the industry to help address its skills gaps and provide students with the most relevant experience. “I would certainly be inclined to take on a college leaver with experience of this kit – it would give them the edge” he said. He also acknowledged the need for more leaders in his sector. “Leadership, supervisory and management training is in short supply we are hoping to work with GYC on this in the future”. Gary Jefferson, Assistant Principal is delighted with the new partnership – “we pride ourselves on building strong relationships with employers, precisely so our students get the best start in their careers. And as an engineer myself I am thrilled to add the latest technology to our already pretty comprehensive learning facilities.