'A legacy we can be proud of' was celebrated by UTC Heathrow and Partners when it won Best Talent Developer award at the prestigious Data Centre World presentation.

The award was handed out at one of the world’s biggest gatherings of digital infrastructure professionals, Data Centre World, which took part at ExCeL London on 8-9 March.

The award was given in recognition of the school’s Digital Futures programme – a UK-first engineering and IT curriculum which launched in November 2021, designed to help combat a skills gap in the digital infrastructure industry.

UTC Heathrow staff, along with 17 eager students, set up in a specially created VIP Student Zone, alongside representatives from the ten data services companies who are supporting the programme.

These ‘UTC Heathrow Partners’* are competitors in the data services world, but have collaborated to come up with an education programme that not only makes youngsters aware of the variety of careers available in this notoriously hush-hush industry, but also trains them up in the skills they need to succeed.

Some of these partners spoke about the talent shortage and the steps educators can take to address it at a panel discussion.

The highlight of the event were the awards. Recognising that UTC Heathrow, with its focus on STEM learning and employer engagement, is an ideal environment to nurture new talent, the judges awarded UTC Heathrow and Partners the Best Talent Developer award.

Summing up the joy of the win, President and CEO of CNet Training, Andrew Stephens, who was instrumental in getting the initiative off the ground, said: “It’s an amazing win for all of the partners, and the UTC and its students. It’s been a long time in the making – I’ve been invested in it for the last six years - but to see everybody run up to the stage, to see how excited they are and to see the students jump up on stage, it really means a lot. It’s a legacy we can be proud of – it’s something we can build on and replicate – there’s no excuse now for us not to have a talent pipeline. Congratulations to everyone who’s been involved – it’s brilliant and I’m so, so proud.”

*The ten partners supporting the Digital Futures programme are: CNetTraining (CNet), Virtus Data Centres, CyrusOne, CBRE, Amazon Web Services, LMG, ARK Data Centres (Crown Hosting Data Centres Limited), Yondr, Kao Data and Soben.