Go West: Tom's passion for engineering earns award | 09/12/2011
CCFE final year apprentice Tom West has won a prestigious award from regional training partnership Oxeta.

Tom won the Grand Award at Oxeta's bursary awards event this week, which was sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Founders. He fought off competition from other engineering apprentices in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire area who are completing their training in 2012, including entrants from BMW, Rolls Royce and Prodrive.

Tom, who is working as a technician in the Remote Handling Group at CCFE, walked away with a £1,000 prize and an invitation to attend a black tie dinner at the Worshipful Company of Founders in London.

To win the award, as well as demonstrating excellence in his technical training, Tom had to show additional attributes such as interpersonal skills and a willingness to be an effective ambassador for apprentices and engineering.

Throughout his time at Culham, Tom has taken part in many outreach activities. He assisted in preparing a display on holographic radar and detection of plastic land mines at the Royal Society's Summer exhibition; starred in a promotional video for apprenticeships with Formula One team principal Ross Brawn; and actively represented CCFE at careers events in the Oxfordshire area. All this in addition to meeting, and discussing his work with, Rt Hon David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, when he visited Culham in September 2010.

Steve Hall, CCFE's Apprentice Group Leader, was understandably very proud of Tom.

"Tom always strives for excellence and makes the most of every opportunity that the Culham apprenticeship offers," he said. "He has a real passion for engineering and certainly gets the most from the CCFE scheme.

"It was very satisfying to all involved in his training to see Tom win this highly sought-after award. He thoroughly deserves it for his outstanding effort, achievements and commitment to our apprenticeship scheme."



Tom West is pictured with Steve Hall at the Oxeta bursary awards event.

Oxeta (www.oxeta.com) is a partnership of employers, private training providers and further education colleges in the Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire areas who have come together with the common aim of delivering an applied and relevant educational framework.

The Worshipful Company of Founders (www.foundersco.org.uk) is one of the City of London's oldest livery companies. Originally created to promote high standards of quality and workmanship in working with bronze and brass, it now supports excellence in engineering and manufacture.



Apprentices' scrapheap challenge
Culham apprentices went back in time to recreate a medieval siege machine for an Oxfordshire Science Festival event.

The team from CCFE competed for Oxford's 'Siege Engineer 2010' title at Cokethorpe School, building a trebuchet capable of launching missiles 50 metres (pictured)

Deputy Apprentice Training Manager Steve Hall explained: 'The contest was great fun and a chance for some of our young engineers to put their skills to the test. It was a real challenge for them to figure out how these machines would have worked, although we used balloons instead of boulders as ammunition!


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