Level 3 Engineering student Toby Collins has won a silver medal in the ‘Mechanical Engineering: CAD’ category at WorldSkills’s UK national finals.

WorldSkills UK is an annual competition that tests students’ vocational skills against their peers from across the country. At Milton Keynes College, the computer-aided design (CAD) qualifiers were hosted by Jay Timpany, Programme Manager for Engineering, who enrolled around 20 students meeting the pre-entry requirements. This year’s qualifiers were particularly popular, and Year 2 student Toby Collins successfully secured a place in the national finals.

The competition allowed Toby to apply his problem-solving skills and theoretical knowledge to complex industry-relevant tasks. Many of the challenges required him to learn new skills in a short amount of time, such as animation.

Reflecting on the experience, Toby Collins said: “I absolutely loved it, I really enjoyed it. It was very intense, but you didn’t know how anyone else did until the award ceremony. It was a great experience to push myself to the limits whilst also really enjoying myself at the same time.

“It’s made me have to work to a very strict deadline and I’ve had to be able to develop intense skills in a short time. For example, I had to interpret complex drawings and information, which is useful as it means I can quickly pick apart information-dense work to get to the important bits.”

Jay Timpany, Programme Manager for Engineering at MK College, said: “This is a huge achievement for Toby and a testament to his passion for engineering, resilience, and proactivity. He wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without these skills and they will benefit him for the rest of his life.

“He is a fantastic student and person, and he thoroughly deserved this – silver is a huge achievement when compared with his peers in the competition as they are from specific design-focussed courses whereas CAD for Toby is a smaller part of his course.”

To learn more about Engineering at MK College, read more here.