18 December 2014

Costain staff helped the London Design and Engineering University Technical College (LDE UTC) stand out at the Skills London 2014 careers fair.

Together with Thames Water and the University of East London, Costain is a leading sponsor of the LDE UTC, which won the award of Best Stand Voted by Visitors, beating off strong competition from the 180 other stands belonging to top universities, training providers and major companies. Skills London is London’s largest jobs and careers event for 15-24 year olds and their families. This year more than 32,000 visitors, including Mayor of London Boris Johnson, attended the event held at ExCeL London.

“Our stand was successful because we showed visitors the type of interactive, hands-on learning that will take place at the LDE UTC,” said Geoffrey Fowler, Principal. “This was backed up by having our sponsors’ staff on the stand.”

Costain’s Jeremy Galpin, Learning and Development Implementation Manager for eight2O - the alliance of industry leaders working with Thames Water on infrastructure improvements - and Harrison O’Hara, Mobile BIM (Building Information Modelling) Technician helped man the stand. It captured around 1000 expressions of interest, with visitors taking away more than 2000 prospectuses, as well as hundreds of promotional gifts and business cards. LDE UTC prospectuses were also available on the stands of other sponsors exhibiting at the show.

“The show was a huge success in raising the profile of the LDE UTC,” said Jeremy. “It is now firmly in the minds of thousands of future students as a fantastic choice to study GCSEs, A-Levels, BTECs and apprenticeships, and gain the skills needed to get into engineering and construction. There are massive opportunities with companies like Costain and Thames Water, whose major projects like the Thames Tideway Tunnel need people with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) skills.”

Also supporting the LDE UTC on its stand was Jason Bradbury, presenter of TV’s The Gadget Show. He said: “You could hardly move for young people with great attitudes to their future, their education, their apprenticeships and the next critical years of their lives. We got a lot of really great feedback, with people signing up and telling us they really wanted to come. It’s a dream school for anyone interested in engineering and design.”

Others members of the eight2O alliance including, Skanska and MWH are also supporting the college and played a key role in the success of the event.

Said Jeremy: “We are now building on the show’s success and working with Thames Water and the other sponsors to put together a high profile programme to promote the school and recruit both students and teachers for the opening in Autumn 2016. It’s going to be immensely exciting.”

 

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