Impressive new centre for institute
Up to 350 students are expected to walk through the doors of Challenger Institute of Technology’s new Building Technology Centre this week.
The $28.6 million centre on Dixon Road opened to students on Tuesday, boasting wide and open training spaces and state-of-the-art technology.
Challenger Institute of Technology campus services manager Peter Hurst said the centre offered three major components, timber technology, including carpentry, joinery and machining, mortar trades, including plastering, bricklaying, tiling and a utilities building which housed plumbing and gas fitting.
“It would be wrong to say most TAFEs have these kinds of facilities,” he said.
“It looks like a nice-size premises from the outside, but when you come inside you think ‘wow’.”
Mr Hurst said he hoped students would be pleased with the environmentally friendly facility.
“At the moment from their perspective they have been over in the yard (old campus) out in the open, so when it rains they have to leave, and they start early in summer to beat the heat,” he said.
“Here it is an all-weather centre, because everything is undercover.”
Mr Hurst said the institute had worked with industry professionals to make sure the training matched industry progression.
“The technology has changed, which has enabled us to change,” he said.
“We have old workshops that have the old air filtration equipment and it clunky and big, because that’s the way things were built years ago.”
Mr Hurst said modern workshop equipment was smaller.
“Anyone who comes out of here will be equipped for what is happening in industry,” he said.
“We are expecting 350 students and 23 staff to start with, which will eventually build to up to 700.”
Challenger chief executive Liz Harris said the new facility would increase Challenger’s training workspace capacity by 28 per cent for building trades and 16 per cent for electrical trades.
“The training centre will meet an ongoing need for trades associated with the State’s resource sector projects,” she said.
As part of the multimillion dollar project, existing training blocks at the Rockingham campus have also been extensively refitted.
