LTi Metaltech is eager to encourage the training of young people particularly utilising apprenticeships, so that the best talent can be developed in a practical environment. The leading technology business is committed to seeing an improvement in the technical skills of the next generation of potential employees in order to avoid a ‘significant generational skills gap’ developing. The experience of their long term employee Gary Chamberlain as a mechanical engineering apprentice has provided a foundation for him to become a Senior Project Engineer at the company and LTi hope to inspire further such examples.

Gary, in his role as a Manufacturing Engineer Manager is responsible for efficiency within the manufacturing process, as well as being responsible for turning clients’ design drawings into a reality, adapting their concepts into a workable model for manufacture; tasks which are based on his initial experience as an apprentice. Through apprenticeships the next generation can learn from LTi Metaltech’s current experienced employees, such as Gary who says in his featured article: ‘I also get a buzz passing on my skills to our new apprentices’, not simply from his own work.

LTi Metaltech want to encourage more young people to follow Gary’s example and use an apprenticeship as a way of entering into skilled jobs in engineering and manufacture. LTi Metaltech runs its own apprenticeship program and is also backing the new University Technical College in Didcot, which is due to open in September 2015. The aim is that these can be a means by which more young people in the local area will be encouraged to undertake skilled apprenticeships in engineering or science leading them to advance roles within the company.