INDUSTRY BUILD. TECH

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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 center 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-the-art 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 center’ s initial focus on the nuclear sector.

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

“ 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 centers of activity at the heart of the UK’ s decarbonization agenda. • www. intelligentcio. com

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