MidKent College wins LCL Awards’ first ever Green Centre Award
23 Sep 2024
Neill Ovenden - Operations Director (LCL Awards), Martin Peat - Executive Director, Corporate Support (Mid Kent College), Chris Hare - Executive Director and Deputy CEO (Mid Kent College), David Owen - Green Solution and Centre Lead, Richie Wilde - Engagement Manager, Peter Conn - Engineer Division, Divisional Manager, Mark Krull – Executive Director, LCL Awards
MKC Training Services’ Net Zero Project, winner of the LCL Awards ‘Green Centre of the Year’, is positioning itself as a centre of excellence for renewables training in the south-east of England.
Our panel of industry judges, comprising Stewart Clements of HHIC, Charlotte Lee of the Heat Pump Association, Brett Forster of NAPIT and Hattie Hasan, of Stopcocks Women Plumbers, voted unanimously in recognition of the work David Owen and his team have put into building a net zero campus to provide the very best environment for renewables training and awarded the project the Green Centre Award for 2024.
We’ll hand over to David Owen, Net Zero Project’s Green Solution and Centre Lead, to fill you in on the background:
“We have been working in collaboration with our parent company Mid Kent College to develop our new renewables training provision here in Maidstone. First, we had to secure £11M of funding to develop the site from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. We wanted the centres’ buildings to be Net Zero, so before we began the build and to replace our existing traditional heating systems, we sunk 60 boreholes, each to a depth of around 150m, to help produce around 75% of the heating we knew we’d need. We also invested in smart control systems, upgrading our Building Management Systems (BMS) across the site.
"We will be fitting some 180 square metres of solar PVT panels above the car ports in the main carpark to power air source heat pumps on the campus and clad all our fire escapes with vertical Solar PV panels. We have upgraded to weather-compensated heat pumps and Pressure Independent Control Valves (PICV) for maximum efficiency, so we’re basically self-sufficient and will be able to stop using traditional heating and lighting methods in the near future.
“These measures support the planet, but also evidence our commitment to green technology to the student community. It’s not just a gimmick, we want them to be able to park under a car port that will charge their car whilst they’re training with us.
“The college has three different sections, housed in three separate buildings. In our brand new Green Academy the focus is on practical learning. Here we teach courses in solar PV, battery storage, air, and ground source heat pump installation. Students will see green technology in the environment around them – solar PV panels in the fabric of the building – and know the water warmed by ground source and air source heat pumps is rainwater harvested from the very building they’re working in.
“Theory is taught in our Skills Factory, which has been developed from 9 repurposed and refurbished portacabins that would otherwise have been scrapped. They have been properly insulated and benefit from Solar PV and smart BMS which brings them bang up to date. In this building we have invested in ASHP and GSHP and built state of the art simulation rigs for Solar and wind generation so that new technology is on hand. Our theory courses include energy efficiency, low temperature hot water and water regulations and we also run courses that focus on sustainability, innovation, and cultural change.
Finally, we have the Home Energy Centre where we focus on gas reassessment and upskilling current gas engineers to renewables. We haven’t forgotten our gas engineers, rather we see them as the future in that they have the technical knowledge and are exactly the right people to upskill into new green technologies.
“A broad approach is important to us. We want the project to be accessible to all and want to be able to provide the full range of courses to people from all walks of life; from homeowners who want to know more about getting to Net Zero, through to installers, specifiers, and designers. We feel that the exceptional facilities we have here, coupled with the courses we are offering, and our committed team means we can do this. We are working closely with local authorities and government to offer many of these courses free to those living and working within our post code area and have just begun a tele-marketing campaign to spread the word.
"We are very excited to have won LCL Awards’ Green Centre Award which will help us publicise and launch our new enterprise. LCL Awards has supported us wholeheartedly in setting up renewables training and adding new qualifications to our existing scheme and for this we are very grateful.”
To find out more about Net Zero Project, please click here. And to find out more about LCL Awards’ renewables qualifications, please click here.
Neill Ovenden - Operations Director (LCL Awards), Martin Peat - Executive Director, Corporate Support (Mid Kent College), Chris Hare - Executive Director and Deputy CEO (Mid Kent College), David Owen - Green Solution and Centre Lead, Richie Wilde - Engagement Manager, Peter Conn - Engineer Division, Divisional Manager, Mark Krull – Executive Director, LCL Awards
MKC Training Services’ Net Zero Project, winner of the LCL Awards ‘Green Centre of the Year’, is positioning itself as a centre of excellence for renewables training in the south-east of England.
Our panel of industry judges, comprising Stewart Clements of HHIC, Charlotte Lee of the Heat Pump Association, Brett Forster of NAPIT and Hattie Hasan, of Stopcocks Women Plumbers, voted unanimously in recognition of the work David Owen and his team have put into building a net zero campus to provide the very best environment for renewables training and awarded the project the Green Centre Award for 2024.
We’ll hand over to David Owen, Net Zero Project’s Green Solution and Centre Lead, to fill you in on the background:
“We have been working in collaboration with our parent company Mid Kent College to develop our new renewables training provision here in Maidstone. First, we had to secure £11M of funding to develop the site from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. We wanted the centres’ buildings to be Net Zero, so before we began the build and to replace our existing traditional heating systems, we sunk 60 boreholes, each to a depth of around 150m, to help produce around 75% of the heating we knew we’d need. We also invested in smart control systems, upgrading our Building Management Systems (BMS) across the site.
"We will be fitting some 180 square metres of solar PVT panels above the car ports in the main carpark to power air source heat pumps on the campus and clad all our fire escapes with vertical Solar PV panels. We have upgraded to weather-compensated heat pumps and Pressure Independent Control Valves (PICV) for maximum efficiency, so we’re basically self-sufficient and will be able to stop using traditional heating and lighting methods in the near future.
“These measures support the planet, but also evidence our commitment to green technology to the student community. It’s not just a gimmick, we want them to be able to park under a car port that will charge their car whilst they’re training with us.
“The college has three different sections, housed in three separate buildings. In our brand new Green Academy the focus is on practical learning. Here we teach courses in solar PV, battery storage, air, and ground source heat pump installation. Students will see green technology in the environment around them – solar PV panels in the fabric of the building – and know the water warmed by ground source and air source heat pumps is rainwater harvested from the very building they’re working in.
“Theory is taught in our Skills Factory, which has been developed from 9 repurposed and refurbished portacabins that would otherwise have been scrapped. They have been properly insulated and benefit from Solar PV and smart BMS which brings them bang up to date. In this building we have invested in ASHP and GSHP and built state of the art simulation rigs for Solar and wind generation so that new technology is on hand. Our theory courses include energy efficiency, low temperature hot water and water regulations and we also run courses that focus on sustainability, innovation, and cultural change.
Finally, we have the Home Energy Centre where we focus on gas reassessment and upskilling current gas engineers to renewables. We haven’t forgotten our gas engineers, rather we see them as the future in that they have the technical knowledge and are exactly the right people to upskill into new green technologies.
“A broad approach is important to us. We want the project to be accessible to all and want to be able to provide the full range of courses to people from all walks of life; from homeowners who want to know more about getting to Net Zero, through to installers, specifiers, and designers. We feel that the exceptional facilities we have here, coupled with the courses we are offering, and our committed team means we can do this. We are working closely with local authorities and government to offer many of these courses free to those living and working within our post code area and have just begun a tele-marketing campaign to spread the word.
"We are very excited to have won LCL Awards’ Green Centre Award which will help us publicise and launch our new enterprise. LCL Awards has supported us wholeheartedly in setting up renewables training and adding new qualifications to our existing scheme and for this we are very grateful.”
To find out more about Net Zero Project, please click here. And to find out more about LCL Awards’ renewables qualifications, please click here.