We had a great day out recently visiting IMI Approved Centre, Macclesfield College. Automotive Program Leader and Lecturer, Lee Burton, gave us a tour of their state of the art Technical and Skills Centre (TASC), which opened up 2024.
Lee has spent over 30 years in the automotive sector, starting from an apprenticeship to where he is today.
The centre has top of the range MOT training facilities and has recently invested heavily in EV and ADAS training. Not only that, they have one of six hydrogen training vehicles, so Macclesfield College is fully committed to future proofing the industry. Hear from Lee below:
The history of Macclesfield College's automotive department
So the history here at Macclesfield College, I've been here now about 2 1/2 years. When I came here, it totally needed revamping, the complete automotive department did. None of the vehicles ran. It had been totally run down.
I had a big conversation with the Deputy Principal at the time who supported everything I said. She gave me some money. I then started to bring the department up. At the time we only had two staff. So then a little bit later on she came to me and said we have an opportunity for some investment. So she asked me to put my wish list together. I put a wish list together, which was £500,000. About 6 to 12 weeks later she come to me and said we've been approved the money, you've got the half a million, so get on and get your department how you want it.
What sets Macclesfield apart?
Obviously we've invested heavily with EV, ADAS, hydrogen. You know we've got every area now including the MOT that we can you know, really push all these advanced qualifications for learners. We're also even pushing our full time learners now with some form of electric vehicle qualifications bolted on when they leave here to make sure that they've got that those skills and they're better prepared to get jobs over other colleges.
All the learners are coming here now because of the equipment. We've got a number of learners when they're starting to look around, other colleges are coming in here and it's the wow factor. The minute they're walking this department, it's like wow.
So the hydrogen car, we're only one or six colleges in the UK with the full hydrogen training vehicle. Absolutely amazing bit of kit. It's got faults on it, so we can flick those on. So you know we're just about to fire that up in the new year for delivering qualifications on it.
We also invested in ADAS heavily, so for driverless vehicle technology. So we've got the Autel which is an absolutely amazing piece of equipment. So the Autel will do wheel alignment at the same time. The diagnostics is a lot of what employers are actually using today.
We had the hybrid trainer, so our hybrid full training that's got so many faults on it as well. And then we've invested again with another ADAS, the Hella Gutmann. So we've got different systems because not every employer has the same system, and it gives them a range of equipment to try.
Find out more about IMI Approved Centres here.
