With all the SkillPLUMB national qualifying heats complete we’re pleased to share with you some of our latest news and, importantly, the eight competitors will be taking part in the UK final after excelling at the national qualifying heats:
- Alan Francis – East Sussex College Group / SB Plumbing & Heating
- Daniel Roberts – Coleg y Cymoedd / Gibson
- Dillon Newton – The Cornwall College Group / Nicholls Plumbing & Heating
- Hannah Barrow – South Bank Colleges / Your Energy Your Way
- Jack Fenton – Belfast Metropolitan College / Reid Energy Solutions
- Jackson Gill – New College Durham / CGE Yorkshire
- Thomas Acum – MidKent College RSME / HM Forces (ARMY) Corps of Royal Engineers
- Tristan McGrath – South West College NI / DE Mechanical
All will now go head-to-head over the week of 24th November at Bridgend College as part of the WorldSkills UK National Finals, where around 40 competitions will be taking place at five different venues across South Wales.
In the quest to be named SkillPLUMB champion, competitors will have to tackle a complex task that involves the installation of a central heating system and hot/cold water system, incorporating a boiler, unvented hot water cylinder and associated pipework and bespoke designed copper radiators.
Following its introduction to the competition last year, competitors will also be working on a heat pump task developed in collaboration with Ideal Heating.
Those who perform well enough and are age eligible could be in with a chance of competing at WorldSkills 2028 in Aichi, Japan.
There has been a great standard across all heats and so we’re excited to see what’s in store for the final. This year we’ve witnessed even greater diversity from our competitors with an increased number of female entrants in the heats and two in our top ten competitors. We wish all our finalists the best of luck and look forward to supporting them in the run-up to the event in November.
Judging Team announced
We're delighted to confirm our team of judges who will be overseeing the UK final this year. Joining Paul Dodds MBE will be industry experts Tracey Richardson, Ronnie Ferris and Ideal Heating's Mark Griffin. Our judges will be there to support our competitors throughout the week and, importantly, will carefully assess each piece of work against a set of strict marking criteria once the task is complete on the final day.
Thank you Sponsors
As always we’d like to thank all of our sponsors, without your support we would not be able to run the competition: Ideal Heating, Monument Tools, Muller Europe, DeWalt, APHC, JIB-PMES, SNIPEF, Water Safe, CIPHE, Plumbmaster and McAlpine.