A ground-breaking ceremony has taken place to mark the start of the construction of City College Norwich’s new £9.1m Digi-Tech Factory.
Corrienne Peasgood OBE, Principal of City College Norwich and staff joined representatives from local construction firm R G Carter and Coffey Architects, to celebrate the first project milestone for this exciting new development.
Situated on the Ipswich Road campus, the Digi-Tech Factory as it will be known will bring together the college’s digital skills provision into a single, purpose-built space, allowing the college to significantly increase the number of students and apprentices studying digital courses.
With support from New Anglia LEP’s Local Industrial Strategy, the UK Digital Strategy and the Department for Education’s Adult Basic Digital Skills agenda, the number of students studying digital skills courses is set to increase significantly. Principal Corrienne Peasgood says:
“The digital tech sector is set to become even more important in the years ahead and it is vital that we equip our students with the skills needed to take up career opportunities in this growth area.
“The Digi-Tech Factory will play a key role in enabling us to deliver innovative, industry-standard learning, and a digital skills curriculum developed with substantial input from employers.
“It is incredibly exciting to have reached this key milestone in turning our vision for digital skills training into reality.”
Leading on the construction, Mario Rackham, Director and General Manager from R G Carter said:
“This ceremony is a great opportunity for us to mark the start of this forward-thinking development to support the region’s growing demand in the digital sector. We look forward to delivering this project and providing students a space to develop the digital skills of the future.”
The Digi-Tech Factory will be home to a wide range of full and part-time courses, as well as apprenticeship learning, from creative media to software and programming, and ‘hard’ digital skills in areas such as networking, infrastructure development, electronics, and automated manufacturing.
As well as providing a bespoke teaching facility, this four-storey building will be a striking visual addition to the campus, featuring a sawtooth roofline, a façade wrapped in a bespoke perforated mesh and a large canopy entrance space.
The £9.1m project has been made possible thanks to a £6.098m investment from New Anglia LEP’s Capital Growth Funding.
Construction is expected to be completed in Summer 2021.