ABB Robotics UK announces its first ‘Apprentice of the Year

ABB’s UK Robotics business has announced 24-year-old apprentice Paul Gorell as its first ‘Apprentice of the Year’. In a special ceremony held at ABB’s robotics centre on 3^rd September, Paul Gorell and 23-year-old, Daniel Kenton were recognised for successfully completing an engineering apprenticeship with ABB and Milton Keynes College. Both Paul and Daniel received their awards from North East Milton Keynes MP, Mark Lancaster as recognition of their achievements as ABB robotics apprentices.

The Scheme

ABB’s Apprenticeship Development Programme (ADP) enables young apprentices to work and study in real-life engineering environments to help tackle the skills shortage in the UK and promote the opportunities available to skilled staff within the engineering sector.

The ABB Apprentice of the Year award assesses apprentices against an Apprentice Competency Model. From a total of 11 apprentices in their final year, three were short-listed, including Paul Gorell. These three were invited to submit evidence of the results of their academic studies and a written article describing the personal benefits of completing the ABB apprenticeship.

The final winner was then decided by a judging panel comprised of ABB’s Country Service Manager, Mike Crawford, Liam Warren of ABB’s UK power service operation, Andy Kozma, ABB’s Process Automation division and Mike Sonley, ABB’s UK Learning & Development Manager.

Local MP joins in the celebrations

Prior to the awards ceremony, Mark Lancaster MP was given a tour of ABB’s robot technology training centre, which offers purpose-built lecture rooms and fully operational applications-based demonstrations to help reinforce theoretical concepts.

Speaking on the day, Mr Lancaster commented; “With a recognised shortage of skilled staff and a growing need to encourage entry onto apprenticeship courses, it is a delight to see ABB supporting new engineers. It is great to see an industry leader involved with the local community and with some of the UK’s leading universities to develop the skills of its own people and the wider community.”

Investing in people

Speaking about ABB’s commitment to developing the UK skills set, Chris Withey, Managing Director of ABB UK robotics business comments, “ABB believes that the UK can gain a competitive advantage in the new green economy if we invest now, but not just in science and engineering. We also need to invest and support a new breed of multi-skilled engineers. ABB’s graduate recruitment programme and apprenticeship scheme aims to change that by enabling young people to take up apprenticeships for training and future employment.”

Withey continues, “Following in Paul and Daniel’s footsteps are two more local apprentices, George Matthews and Daniel Taylor, both about to begin their second year at ABB Milton Keynes in September. Both George and Daniel are hungry for success and through this scheme will be given the tools to identify the opportunities for their own career paths within a global engineering company”.

Supporting the engineers of tomorrow

The apprenticeship scheme is part of a wider educational scheme operated by ABB throughout the UK. As part of this scheme, a number of ABB robots are installed in Colleges and Universities around the UK. Students are also given experience in programming and using robotic technology through free access to ABB’s PC-based robot programming software, which is widely used throughout industry to program and control ABB’s industrial robots.

Technology and education plays a key role for ABB. It has nine research centres across the UK working with 6,000 scientists and ABB collaborate with over 70 universities across the world, of which several are in the UK.