I keep getting asked for pictures and what floorskills training center has on offer. We moved into the new training center around 8 months ago. Was a new unit but totally bare with no toilets etc. Just 4 walls ! We set around building the new center. Many man hours (well mostly mine on my own) to get it to where it is now, we are still a long way off being finished but the first half is now complete- FloorSkills is believed to be Europe's largest floor-coverings training center with over 6000 sq ft of training area. (6000sqft at the moment, we keep growing) The largest training bays in Europe with bays from 4sq'm up to 15sq'm (28 in use being extending up to 44 bays very soon) 55sq'm test area, dedicated area to test floor-coverings or we can provide manufacturer training or bespoke training to an area size up to 55 sq m (one complete area) Dedicated sub-floor prep areas for smoothing compounds (12 bays) Dedicated 'sand + seal' area (15sq m) 2x conference / training rooms Full disabled facilities, we also have shower facility's High tech interactive computer system to include smart boards, windows8 software, interactive stations Separated sections, e.g. we can run 4 different courses at the same time in totally different areas of the building All bays have REAL skirts etc and are painted fresh. From experience we have found that fresh easy to damage paint will soon teach a apprentice how careful they need to be! All bays are slightly different size and they all have 'wonky' walls. Since when do houses have straight walls? we do our best to replicate the real world. All bays have different obstacles. Real world ceramic toilets, shower trays etc. CAA/CSKILLS approved training center Accredited courses, we are the ONLY floor-coverings training center with accredited courses. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY OTHER TRAINING CENTERS OFFERING 'Accredited' courses that are accredited by them only. We are CAA/CSkills accredited. BIG DIFFERENCE! Apprenticeship approved training center. We have full funding in place. Full catering facilities, we have an in house catering team that provides everyone on a course with both hot and cold lunch meals. The trainers- We have a great team that offer - NVQ Level 3 qualified instructors Teaching awards qualified (believed to be one of the only training centers where instructors are actually qualified to instruct/teach) First Aid trained instructors College APPROVED instructors Cskills/CAA APPROVED instructors A1 assessor qualified (nvq assessors) instructors NICF Master fitter instructors Manufacturer approved (all supporting manufactures) instructors
The stairs are all inter changeable. They can last a fair few months, however some of this weeks group managed to destroy a few sets in a few hours ! As for plywood, if your talking about bases of training areas then they last about 2 months. If you mean how often do we need to plywood for say LVT etc, well depending on what course is running , they either ply themselves or i pre do plywood for them. Can be a pain in arse at 5pm when course is finished and i have to get ready for next bunch of 10. that means 10 training bays to plywood ! however i can normally knock out 10 bays in 3 hours or so. Its a pain in backside as each bay is slightly different size. You also have the issue that it needs to be perfect as the students on apprenticeship are always looking for a fault they can pull the instructor up on
Thinking carpets, was just wondering about all the gripper nail holes, I still fit carpets top down, but fitting "bottom up" theres no bull nose or newel post to confuse matters,
We have BN, winders, open plan steps etc. What you see in the bays are totally straight stairs ready for a basic fitting course. We change the obstacles in bays depending on what course is running. For example a basic course they would get a wooden shower tray! when we do a advanced course that shower tray will be ceramic. We also have wonky walls, marble fire places etc for when we want to make it really hard. The bays in teh pictures are also our basic bays. When we get into advanced they move to the much larger bays. We actually have a proper HSL with rooms off it (not pictured) As for fitting bottom up or top down. Well we teach both ways. We teach both ways as sometimes it is more practical to do one way than the other. Im not going to say which way but i believe that you should be shown both ways. No preaching of whats right and whats wrong. Simple, if you know both ways you will decide for yourself which method is best.
I'm in the1st group of apprentices and its very well thought out and laid out. This time round we had Matt and Dan teaching and its all been very detailed. If I was to score the courses so far out of 10 it'd be an 11. I know it's corny butvI can't say enough about how impressive the set up and instructors are.
