BITA Academy \u2013 the industry-led organisation that delivers apprenticeships in materials handling equipment (MHE) engineering \u2013 has announced that it will now be known as F-TEC (Forklift Training Engineering Centre).<\/p>\n
The name change is part of a wider overhaul of the apprenticeship provider\u2019s operation that includes the opening of the UK\u2019s first dedicated lift truck engineer training centre, where the next generation of UK forklift truck service engineers will receive the highest levels of industry-focused skills training and mature engineers can upgrade their knowledge to ensure that they keep pace with the industry\u2019s increasingly rapid technological advances.<\/p>\n
Karl Baum, a Director of F-TEC, comments: \u201cWe feel that the name F-TEC better reflects our broad remit to serve the interests of both the British Industrial Truck Association (BITA) <\/a>and the Forklift Truck Association (FLTA)<\/a> \u2013 both of whom are founding partners in F-TEC.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur principal aim is to provide a steady stream of qualified service engineers with the technical, academic and interpersonal skills needed to represent the companies whose forklift trucks and other MHE are the backbone of Britain\u2019s retail and manufacturing economies.\u201d<\/p>\n Karl Baum continues: \u201cThe forklift truck industry has long been aware of the need to encourage more school leavers and other young people to enter the industry as service engineers. We estimate that sustaining the number of qualified engineers available to the industry at their present level requires some 200 fully qualified engineers to graduate every year. Our intention is to provide at least this amount.\u201d<\/p>\n F-TEC\u2019s training centre will open its doors to its first group of apprentices in July 2016.<\/p>\n Based in Swindon, the 5000 sq ft facility features lecture theatres and a workshop area, where apprentices will gain practical experience across a broad range of forklift brands and model types while established engineers will be taught the specific new skills required by their employers.<\/p>\n \u201cEstablishing our own training centre really is a game-changer,\u201d says Operations Director, Tiffany Jenkins. \u201cWe now have our own full-time team of training personnel which ensures that all apprentices that pass through our Swindon Training Centre receive the same uniformly high standard of education and are perfectly prepared to enter the industry, while those more mature engineers can upgrade their skill sets by attending bespoke training courses overseen by experts that meet the changing mechanical demands of the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n F-TEC\u2019s apprenticeship programmes and other courses for established engineers are designed to provide the best experience for students and their employers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BITA Academy has announced that it will now be known as F-TEC (Forklift Training Engineering Centre).
\nAt F-TEC, the next generation of UK forklift truck service engineers will receive the highest levels of industry-focused skills training and mature engineers will be able to upgrade their knowledge to ensure that they keep pace with the industry\u2019s increasingly rapid technological advances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f-tec.org.uk\/f-tec-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}