A Journey Through EAGIT - by Marguerite Finn
24/09/09
An Engineering Journey - 1968 to 2007
On 26 July this year, EAGIT Ltd (formerly known as East Anglian Group Industrial Training) celebrates its 40th anniversary – having survived for forty years at the cutting edge of engineering training through good and bad years alike.
EAGIT was set up in 1968 by a group of 28 engineering firms in East Anglia to help combat the shortage of skilled engineering craftsmen in the county and cater for the training requirements of local engineering firms. The Training Centre in Hurricane Way on Norwich Airport Industrial Estate was opened on 10th October 1968 by Mr Kenneth Keith, Chairman of the Economic Planning Council for the East Anglian Region, and accepted its first intake of 40 boys who started their three years of training with a 48-week course in general ‘off-the-job’ engineering training.
The project was a great success and by 1978, EAGIT was bursting at the seams. According to John Snelling, then Chairman of EAGIT Management Council: “The incredible fact is that EAGIT has well over 80 confirmed bookings for next year for what is still at 60-place centre”. The Manpower Services Commission was persuaded to allocate £130,000 for an extension to be built increasing the capacity of the training centre by 50 percent.
1978 was an important year in the history of the training centre. Sixty-six trainees graduated amongst them EAGIT’s first ever first female trainee – Marie Goodbody. Marie was an apprentice in electrical engineering who worked for Ross Foods Ltd. at Worstead, and she made the headlines as the first woman in the food, drink and tobacco industries ever to complete first stage training as an engineering apprentice. Nearly thirty years later, with the help of the EDP and EEN, we tracked Marie down to France, where she is now living with her husband and two teenage children. She runs her own business managing holiday accommodation – and continues to put the skills learnt at EAGIT to good use every day!
In addition to basic engineering skills, EAGIT encouraged trainees to show flair and innovation in their work. For example, Dereham Hospital benefited from projects carried out by first-year engineering trainees at EAGIT. Vincent Spall and Paul Searle – both 17 at the time and working for Dreibholz and Floering – studied three different types of walking frame and combined the best parts of each to form a triple purpose frame which they designed, built and presented to the physiotherapy unit.
Under the watchful eye of instructor, Richard Watling, another group of trainees constructed a unique climbing frame in the shape of a tank - which is still in pride of place at Winterton Holiday Park on the North Norfolk coast. Richard Watling sadly died in June 2000 but his son, Dr. Jeremy R. Watling, now EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow/Lecturer in the Dept. of Electronics & Electrical Engineering at the University of Glasgow, remembers playing on the climbing frame with his brother and hearing his Dad say proudly that “What EAGIT does was and is made to last”.
John and June Hudson of Winterton Holidays confirm that the climbing ‘tank’ frame is still a favourite and has outlived other playground structures that have come and gone since 1978. They send EAGIT their best wishes for the 40th Anniversary.
EAGIT faced its toughest challenge between 1980 and 1982 when there was a drastic down turn in the local engineering industry, leaving it in its worst state for 35 years. Trainee numbers dropped and Sir Douglas Bader, presenting the prizes at EAGIT’s annual prize giving in 1980 urged East Anglia’s Engineering firms to ‘Bring back the wartime spirit’ and fight to improve the desperate state of the industry. Seventy trainees graduated but the sudden downturn in the fortunes of the engineering industry meant that only 30 of the 90 places available had been booked for the coming year. Things did not improve and Lord Scanlon, who presented the prizes in 1981 warned that if the upturn in the economy did not happen very soon ‘ we can forget about being an industrial nation’. He said that engineering was the most important of the wealth-creating industries. Two apprentices at EAGIT did not let the recession deter them from successfully producing a ‘beach mobile’ enabling wheelchairs to be pulled along the beech.
EAGIT did not take the recession lying down. The management team headed by Mr. John Baynton and Mr. Stefan Przyborski, decided that rather than waste the resources of the unit and its skilled staff, it would rent its workshop to Norwich City Council for an experimental three-month project of an Inventor’s Workshop. Inspired by a scheme in Yorkshire, which gave inventors scope for developing their ideas and making prototypes of their inventions, Norwich City Council and EAGIT decided to give it a go.
By the time Geoff Capes came to give out the prizes later that year, EAGIT had been given the opportunity to pioneer the government’s new training initiative and was able to put the worst of the recession behind them.
For the rest of the 1980s EAGIT continued to progress and in 1984 a new technology centre was opened which would offer training in turning, milling, simulation and micro-computing. In 1987 the centre was awarded the status of “approved training centre” by the Manpower Services Commission. As fewer than half the training centres receive this award at first attempt, this made EAGIT one of the front-runners in the field.
In 1989, Henry Cooper arrived by helicopter to present the prizes to the winners of a group of about 100 trainees – including Janine Goodrum, a female apprentice from Lotus Engineering.
Another slight downturn in the industry occurred in 1992, when the number of apprentices at EAGIT dropped to 14. Undaunted, EAGIT staged the EAGIT Primary and Middle Schools Engineering Project at Norfolk County Hall on 23 June 1992. Children from 9 Norwich Schools competed for the £10,000 awards aimed at setting youngsters on the path to a career in engineering. The winners of the 1st prize were Poringland County Primary School.
EAGIT celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1993. A plaque was unveiled by the Rt. Hon. David Hunt M.P. – Minister of State for Education. Also present were John Woodisse, Managing Director of Norfolk and Waveney Training and Enterprise Council, Patrick Thompson M.P. for Norwich North, Derek George, Chairman of the Board of EAGIT Directors and David Shorten, Chief Executive of EAGIT.
The milestone was marked by the setting up of a sponsorship deal between EAGIT , the Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) and selected local companies which enabled twenty-five young people to serve a four-year engineering apprenticeship and be guaranteed a job at the end of it.
In 1994, the centre achieved BS5750 accreditation and became a Resource Centre for the Engineering Training Authority. In 1996 celebrated a 100 percent success rate amongst its young engineers. Thirty-four men and one girl all met the high standards set by the Engineering Training Authority after 46 weeks training.
Eagit’s 30th anniversary in 1998 saw a new partnership with Anglian Water and a new ‘water’ cell was established for specialist training purposes at the Hurricane Way centre.
All that had gone before enabled EAGIT to face the challenges of the new Millennium with confidence. The early 2000s saw closer working relationships with ECITB, JTL, Norwich City College and Pro-Train.
EAGIT is now a Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) and the Norfolk Academy of Engineering.
David Shorten, Chief Executive who has been 32 years with EAGIT was very upbeat when reviewing EAGIT’s progress in 2006. “We have expanded into new premises at No.5 Hurricane Way, which is now the headquarters of EAGIT Norfolk Engineering Academy and houses the administrative and marketing staff plus the fast-growing welding and fabrication department. EAGIT is a key player in the Government’s flagship training programme “Train to Gain”. We now have a contract to deliver Level 2 qualifications to eligible staff and companies with the aim of adding value to UK companies and minimising the skills gap”. He went on to say: “EAGIT has also been chosen by the Qualifications Curriculum Authority (QCA) as one of just 20 Training Providers across the country to take part in a pilot for the e-assessment and e-portfolio of the new EAL Performing Engineering Operations qualification.”
Keith Franklin (Operations Manager at EAGIT Training Centre, who is overseeing the pilot scheme, has high hopes for the scheme says: “Students of today are more confident with computers and will find it easier to build up their portfolios with video, photographic and digital recording evidence – which will speed up both the production and the assessment of evidence”.
In effect, with forty years of engineering training behind them, EAGIT is an on-going success story. Well Done EAGIT!
If you wish to know more about apprenticeships call 01603-401606 to speak to Jamie Cooper.
