THE consortium running Europe’s most ambitious aircraft manufacturing project since Concorde has chosen a UK further education college to play a leading part in training its future engineers.

City of Bristol College has been awarded a pound;170,000 contract by Airbus to provide some of the skills needed by new apprentices to build airliner wings and fuel systems.

The college is set to become a Centre of Vocational Excellence (COVE) in aeronautical engineering, under the Government’s drive to promote specialisation. The move will free Airbus factory space for additional training and, if successful, could lead to at least a 10-year partnership.

Twenty-eight apprentices from Airbus in Filton have begun initial engineering training at the College’s Engineering and Development Centre in a one-year renewable deal. Over 32 weeks, all new Airbus apprentices will learn skills including machining, sheet-metal working and health and safety on an NVQ level 2 engineering programme.

“This is a basic training programme preparing them for the more specialist aircraft work when they go back to the company,” said Geoff Morgan, engineering skills development centre manager.

Airbus used to train engineering recruits in-house but needs extra facilities to train more apprentices.

“This is a big boost for the college and the faculty of engineering. We are very pleased to be in partnership with Airbus, and it is a big step forward,” said Mr Morgan. “It’s a one-year contract at the moment but Airbus has a 10-year training plan and, obviously, we are all hoping this will continue beyond this first year.”

The college’s engineering centre is five years old. It won a Beacon award in 1998 and was a major selling-point in securing the lucrative Airbus deal. Equipment includes machine tools and computer-aided engineering software.

Mr Morgan said: “Airbus chose the college because we have a modern, well-equipped engineering centre with all the facilities, including industrially experienced staff, to meet the training and educational requirements of the company.”

A local agency, Brunel Training Group, helped broker the partnership between the college and Airbus. It will monitor the progress of trainees both in college and at the company. The Airbus apprentices are studying alongside 17 other students from other companies linked to the Brunel Training Group.

“We were looking to work with a college that had really good on-site training facilities, and City of Bristol has those,” said Kate Watcham, of Airbus.

“The selection criteria for our apprentices is quite high, and we do have very high standards as safety is obviously of the utmost importance for us. We have to be sure that people who work at the factory are highly skilled, because at the end of the day we are producing wings for our aircraft and we have to be sure they are assembled properly,” she said.

An existing training centre at Airbus’s Filton base is now freed up. The consortium has begun building the colossal A380 superjumbo, set to be the world’s largest airliner. Scheduled to enter service in 2006, it will carry up to 800 passengers. Space at Filton is hence at a premium.