Northumberland College

Robertson completed new and improved facilities for Northumberland College, at its main Ashington Campus and its rural Kirkley Hall Campus. The College is the largest training provider in the region, offering over 40 apprenticeships and working with more than 700 businesses.

The £7.3m project comprised two phases: an engineering workshop at the Ashington Campus; and a new workshop, classrooms and learning suite at Kirkley Hall.

We are excited for the future, our brand-new industry-standard facilities will undoubtedly give students the best vocational learning environments available.

– Stuart Cutforth, Principal and Chief Executive at Northumberland College

The Ashington Campus workshop is where the college's engineering and automotive courses are taught. It focuses on advanced manufacturing, where the sector's future workforce is trained for careers in research and development in the automotive, construction and aerospace industries.

A new tractor workshop and teaching and learning block was also created at the college's rural Kirkley Hall campus near Ponteland.

The investments at both sites included over 5,000 square metres of buildings with state-of-the-art learning facilities with engineering and construction workshops, hair and beauty salons and a restaurant open to the public at Ashington.

Works were very carefully planned to ensure Northumberland College continued to deliver education and training to their students while the campus upgrade was ongoing.

We also worked with the college by providing our own learning opportunities for students during the construction.

We upgraded the facilities at the Ashington campus:

• Advanced construction, engineering and motor vehicle workshops;

• Refurbished brickwork, plastering, carpentry and painting and decorating workshops;

• Refurbishment of the ground floor of the main campus building to create an interactive environment supported by a brand-new hair and beauty salon and restaurant;

• Enhancement of the overall site to provide a high-quality learning environment.

At the Kirkley Hall campus, we created:

• New arboriculture and tractor workshops;

• A new-build education block with eight classrooms, open learning suite and learning resource centre.

Both buildings were opened in late summer 2014 in time for the new academic year.

The new facilities greatly enhanced the teaching and learning facilities for students, by providing brand-new facilities and large enhanced workshops that enabled new courses to be introduced.