TIS Academy apprentices have been crowned ‘Ultimate Apprentices’ in a national fire and security engineering competition hosted by Skills for Security at the NEC in Birmingham. The competition challenges competitors to show their engineering ability, teamwork and communication skills.
Apprentices Jack Kempson and Michael Romano, pictured centre, were required to complete installations across system types – intruder alarm, video surveillance, and access control and door entry – with assessment based on their equipment selection, technical engineering, standard of installation, termination and configuration, compliance checking and documentation. The winning TIS team won a £1,000 prize to share.
TIS, a life safety, security and communications systems integrator, launched its Apprenticeship Academy in 2021 to address the widespread engineering skills shortage and create youth job opportunities across its offices in Mansfield, Nottingham, Coleshill outside Birmingham, Leeds and Uxbridge.
James Twigg, CEO of TIS, said: “We’re very proud of what Jack and Michael have accomplished in this apprenticeship challenge and it’s a fantastic showcase for the whole TIS Academy team, from apprentices through to trainers and support staff. It was important for us as a business to launch the Academy and renew our commitment to deliver highly-skilled individuals across our growing and demanding business. It’s fantastic to see our apprentices demonstrating their talent and being recognised for their hard work.”
Pictured left is David Scott, Managing Director, Skills for Security. He said: “Congratulations to both apprentices and to TIS for an unbelievable performance at this year’s competition. Our judges this year were over the moon with the efforts and quality of work of all the competitors. Jack and Michael should all be delighted with the standard of their work completed over the competition.”
Jack Kempson added: “I think the Skills for Security challenge was a great opportunity to participate in and gain additional practical experience across a range of new systems we haven’t worked on before. The competition element was interesting as it put us into new situations we hadn’t faced with unfamiliar technologies. Fortunately, we were able to put into practice the knowledge we’ve gained from the Academy to figure out how to complete the technical specification. To win the competition was an added bonus!”
