Engineering

An engineering career will provide you with excellent pay, lots of variety in your work and high levels of job satisfaction. Whichever discipline you choose, building a strong foundation of knowledge with an engineering course at NPTC Group of Colleges can start you out on your journey to success.

You will gain other skills for wider employability skills, English, Maths and IT, personal learning skills and social and communication skills which are highly valued by employers and will make you a more rounded, employable professional. Our close relationship with the industry ensures that we are in step with the latest technological advances, giving you the very best training available.

What will I do?

MECHANICAL/MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING Mechanical/Maintenance Engineering involves many different routes including analysis, design, manufacturing and maintenance of mechanical systems. You will develop a solid understanding of key concepts. Mechanical/ Maintenance Engineers use these principles and others in the design and analysis of specialist components in a variety of sectors. Our purpose-built industry-specification workshops and classrooms house state-of-the-art engineering equipment and computers. Workshops contain manual lathes, milling machines and engineering benches, while separate specialised workshops and classrooms contain Haas advanced (CNC) Computer Numerical Controlled machines in both milling and turning, Computer Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing technology. Our hydraulics and pneumatics/electro-pneumatics workshop houses many vital test rigs, which are essential to test and assess the capability and performance of components for industrial use. FABRICATION & WELDING The fabrication and welding industry requires highly skilled people for the many employment opportunities in areas such as energy, oil and gas, engineering maintenance and industrial manufacturing.

Our highly skilled lecturers will support and guide you through the basics of this industry and you will learn how welding integrates into an engineering system. Our industrial specification purpose-built fabrication and welding workshops house high-quality equipment, covering all aspects of welding applications, including Metal Inert Gas (MIG), Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG), Manual Metal Arc (MMA), and Destructive and Non-Destructive Testing (DT/NDT) CNC Plasma machines.

Career opportunities

b Strong links with over 100 local, regional and national employers b Great progression opportunities to university and excellent apprenticeship programmes b Fantastic state-of-the-art engineering facilities b Courses matched to industry standards to meet skills needed b One of the most in-demand, growing sectors of industry.

Sam Cottrell Curtis Rees

Student Success

Sam Cottrell – Mechanical Engineering Student Sam Cottrell has been crowned the ‘Best in Wales’ against 40+ students/competitors from the 12 Welsh FE Colleges and other learning providers as part of Skills Competition Wales. Sam has now secured a place within the Welsh Squad and will now compete against other United Kingdom medal winners head to head for number one position to represent the UK against the rest of the world.

Curtis Rees Welding Apprentice - Now employed at NPTC Group of Colleges Curtis Rees, a welding apprentice from Neath College, was among the nation’s top skilled young people who were recognised at the WorldSkills National Final two years ago. Curtis from Resolven is the first student from NPTC Group of Colleges to win a highly coveted gold medal as he triumphed in his discipline at the NEC in Birmingham. The prestigious competition saw more than 500 apprentices and students compete in over 70 disciplines to be crowned the best in the UK in a vocational pathway. Curtis achieved an overall score of 92.25% out of 100 to claim his gold medal, the first for NPTC Group of Colleges in any national competition. Work-Based Learning Manager at Pathways Training, Alec Thomas, was delighted with Curtis’s achievement and said: “Curtis’s enthusiasm for welding and for WorldSkills UK is infectious and he is already encouraging new apprentices to be involved. This can only be good for the industry and local businesses, and will help to support the development of new opportunities for young people in the area.” Curtis has big plans for the future and he has big aspirations to run his own business within the field of structural welding, where he has spotted a gap in the market.

Courses

Career-Focused Courses Level Entry Requirements Engineering (Mechanical/Welding) 2 4 GCSEs at grade A*-D including Maths and English.

Enhanced BTEC Engineering 3 5 GCSEs grades A*-C including English, Maths, 90 Credit Diploma Science and 2 of the following: Level 2 Extended Certificate in Engineering with overall MM, Merit in Mathematics for Engineering and GCSE Maths grade C/4 or above.

Average annual earnings

Duration Location

1 Year Newtown

2 Years Newtown