Bricklaying, roof slating and tiling students at Leeds College of Building are benefitting from sponsorship agreements with multiple leading building products suppliers and manufacturers that are providing bricks, roofing materials and personal protective equipment.
The world’s largest brick manufacturer Wienerberger, is supplying safety clothing and thousands of bricks for bricklaying students to practice laying and its roof tile brand Sandtoft is providing clay roof tiles for the College’s roofing students to use. In addition, Leeds based Howarth Timber, which is the UK's largest privately-owned timber company, is supplying the students with high visibility clothing after the College hosted a number of training events for the company’s sales team.
This trio of companies joins a number of other leading organisations that sponsor the College’s roofing and bricklaying courses including Midland Lead, John Brash, Cembrit, Klober, Hunslet Roofing, Kestevens, CUPA and Burlington Slate.
Steve Connell, Curriculum Manager at Leeds College of Building, says: “Having the support of these organisations makes a huge difference to both our roofing and bricklaying students giving them the opportunity to work with the latest building materials from leading manufacturers that they will no doubt continue to use throughout their careers. Our new 8,000 square metre campus, which opened earlier this year, is also built using Wienerberger’s bricks and includes pillars around the building which showcase many types of brick laying bond, so it’s particularly fitting that students can now work with the same bricks.
“The donation of high visibility clothing from Howarth Timber and Wienerberger has also been popular with our students. Wearing personal protective equipment is an essential habit to get into and it also helps to replicate a live construction site, so it’s something we’re always keen to promote.”
Mark Terry, National Sales Manager at Howarth Timber, says: “We’re delighted to support Leeds College of Building with this donation. The College recently hosted a superb training event for us, which gave our entire sales team the opportunity to use a wide range of products they sell on a daily basis, as well as gaining first-hand experience of how they work and benefit tradespeople. The event culminated with a skills competition and it was a huge success, we’re already planning to run another similar initiative with the College in the coming months.”
Robin Batty from Wienerberger said: “We pride ourselves in continually investing and supporting the future talent of the construction industry and supplying Leeds College of Building with bricks and roof tiles is a great way of doing this. It also gives students the chance to work with some of the finest building materials on the market.”
Leeds College of Building recently opened a brand new state of the art £17million purpose-built education and training facility in Leeds city centre. It delivers a comprehensive range of courses related to construction and the built environment, including Apprenticeships, further and higher education and business training.
Building and construction courses are available at all levels and range from practical, work related programmes designed to prepare students for work in a variety of trades, to technician courses that will help them progress to further study.
