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28th January 2021
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Greystone welcomes WorldSkills Tiling Squad
This month North West Regional College's Greystone Centre has been the venue for the latest round of competition to choose a UK representative in Floor & Wall Tiling for the World Skills Competition in 2011.
Four students from across the UK have been at the Limavady Campus centre to undertake a challenging contest, which will see them one step closer to securing a place on the squad. Among the contenders is the College's own tiling champion, Ian McMahon, who holds triple gold medals from NI Skillbuild and a bronze medal from the UK-wide competition.
Ian is facing stiff competition for the elusive place on the squad from Harry Coyle, Leeds College of Building, Jonothan Carter, Northumberland College, and Mark Woods of South West College's Omagh Campus.
The past three days of competition has tested the talent and skills of the four competitors like never before, with an intricate Christmas themed design to replicate. Marking takes into account every millimetre measurement made by each student.
Greystone Lecturer David McCay is also Technical Manager for UKSkills Floor & Wall Tiling and was joined by Steve Ainsley in judging this round. The Adjudicator was Bob Howard, Director and Training Chairman of The Tile Association.
As the students prepared to complete their work Steve commented: "The standard of the work has increased by 25% over the past few days. The competition is really too close to call at this stage."In fact, following the judging, it was decided to allow all four competitors to continue in the race to become UK representative for Wall & Floor Tiling - the quality of their work was too high to separate them at this stage."
As this round concluded David expressed his thanks to the sponsors who have generously supported the event including The Tile Association, Johnson Tiles, Webber Adhesives and Rubi Tools, which supplied the wet cutters for the three-day competition.
Further training and selection events will take place in the coming months and the successful candidate will be announced in June 2011, ahead of the World Skills Competition in London in October.
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3rd December 2010