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Industry Training Board( ECITB) has awarded £ 250,000 in Regional Skills Hub funding to a new robotics training facility in West Cumbria in the UK.

The Cumbria Robotics Operations Skills Centre( CROSS), which will officially open later this year, has been developed collaboratively to build the robotics-skilled workforce needed to deliver the UK’ s nuclear and clean energy ambitions.

Plans for the centre of excellence were first announced in April, with the collaborative venture involving the UK Atomic Energy Authority( UKAEA), National College for Nuclear and Clean Energy, the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Collaboration, Sellafield and its supply chain and Lakes College.

The project has already secured £ 1 million in funding from UKAEA through the FOSTER programme, including providing state-of-theart equipment to equip the CROSS facility.

The extra funding from the ECITB, which comes from the industry-led skills body’ s investment in Regional Skills Hubs, will support the delivery of the hub, such as developing the curriculum, short bite-sized courses and teaching resources and the expansion of technical and sector-relevant content beyond the centre’ s initial focus on the nuclear sector.

“ The ECITB is delighted to support this innovative project in Cumbria from our Regional Skills Hub funding, which targets capacity-building projects like this in the UK’ s industrial heartlands.

“ Industry intelligence shows there is currently a lack of industry-applicable robotics training available for careers in the engineering construction industry( ECI).

“ A key pillar of the ECITB’ s Leading Industry Learning strategy under the Transform pillar is to drive technology adoption through training to allow industry to harness new technologies, including robotics.

“ This project and the new, cutting-edge CROSS facility help meet this objective by delivering much-needed robotics training to benefit the Sellafield nuclear site and other ECI sectors in the future. Our investment and collaboration with project partners position the ECITB at the heart of emerging ECI robotics modularised training development and roll-out,” said Andrew Hockey, ECITB Chief Executive.”

Regional Skills Hubs funding

The ECITB’ s Regional Skills Hubs funding initiative has committed to invest over £ 3 million to boost training provider capacity and grow new entrant numbers in industrial cluster hotspots and other major ECI centres of activity at the heart of the UK’ s decarbonisation agenda.

Grants of between £ 50,000 and £ 500,000 are awarded to eligible projects that meet set criteria, such as the need to match ECITB grant funding from industry partners.

To date, the ECITB had committed £ 1.6 million in funding, which has had £ 14.4 million match funding from industry partners for projects across North East and Central Scotland, Teesside and Humberside.

Hundreds of learners to benefit from robotics training

This latest funding commitment for Cumbria contributes towards the delivery of robotics training where there is currently no existing facility. The centre aims to deliver training to 650 learners by 2030. WWW. INTELLIGENTCISO. COM 43