An additional $7 million Tasmanian Government investment in a Trades and Water Centre of Excellence will allow TasTAFE to offer new qualifications to meet the emerging training needs of industry. The additional funding brings the total Tasmanian Government investment in the project, to be built at TasTAFE’s Clarence Campus, to $14 million.

This week the Minister for Education, Jeremy Rockliff, joined TasTAFE CEO, Jenny Dodd, and Master Plumbers Association of Tasmania Vice President Michael Overeem to inspect the site where the centre will be built.

The Trades and Water Centre of Excellence will be unique in Australia, incorporating traditional trades such as plumbing, refrigeration and air conditioning but also emerging needs such as polywelding. Additional funding will expand the training offered at the Centre to include Hydrogen training, Tasmania Fire Service training and wastewater systems.

In 2019 TasTAFE trained 410 students through the Claremont Campus training facility, with an additional 90 students studying at other locations. The new centre will cater for double this capacity in certificate and diploma-level qualifications, plus the capacity to cater for a range of new courses.

In addition to TasTAFE’s current offerings, it will offer new plumbing units and skill sets; Certificate II through to Diploma level water industry qualifications as well as new industry-focussed short courses. A Diploma of Hydraulic Services and various qualifications in hydrogen will also to be developed in consultation with industry.

The Trades and Water Centre of Excellence will be one of the newest facilities in Australia, incorporating the latest contemporary design and equipment. It will be built on land adjacent to the existing construction and allied trades workshops at Clarence Campus, creating a trades training hub.

The new building will be re-configurable so that it can cater for the future needs of industry and will include a six storey stack to replicate the pipes and inner workings of a multi-story building. It will be designed using Building Information Modelling (BIM) with the Tasmanian Building and Construction Industry Training Board working with TasTAFE to provide expertise in this area.

Construction will begin this year.

The Centre is strongly supported by industry and it will have its own Industry-based advisory board, to ensure operations and training align with the skill needs of employers. The project steering committee includes the Tasmanian Building and Construction Industry Training Board (TBICITB), Master Plumbers Association, the Air-conditioning and Mechanical Contractors Association (ACMA) and TasWater.

The Tasmanian Government and TasTAFE are actively partnering with Tasmania’s trades and water industry to grow the economy and create jobs, helping the sector reach its full potential and recover post-COVID-19.