Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street has visited Solihull College & University Centre’s Blossomfield Campus to officially launch the College’s partnership with Virgin Trains.
Students from the College’s Computing & Emerging Technologies department have built a virtual train carriage for Virgin Trains to use as a health and safety training tool.
As part of his visit, the Mayor unveiled the Virgin Trains logo in the campus reception before being treated to a demonstration of the training tool from students in the College’s purpose-built VR Lab.
The Mayor successfully ran through one of the training drills himself. He commented: “I was blown away by the reality of it and of course the commercial application. The skills that the young people here are learning will give them a wonderful career however they decide to use them going forward.”
The College works closely with industry to ensure students leave with the skills necessary to gain employment. The project with Virgin Trains is just one example of student learning being applied to real world situations.
Sam Stuart, Route Safety Manager for Virgin Trains was also in attendance. He said: “On behalf of Virgin Trains, I’d just like to say thanks for all the work these students have done. They’ve done it in such a short amount of time which is absolutely amazing.”
The Mayor added “The ways in which these skills can be used are endless. That’s what’s so exciting about this. It’s typical of Solihull College to be right at the cutting edge of technology.”
