WHEN 50-year-old national training boss Andy Brown helped 17-year-old Sam Thompson make a handle for a tool box, it was as if he had gone back to his youthful apprenticeship in the Royal Air Force.

But when he stepped into the next door classroom at Blackburn’s Training 2000 headquarters to see young project control trainees using a 3D printer, he found himself in a different era of technology.

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The Dundee-born operations director of the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board has come to the Furthergate Business Park to gets some hands-on experience of modern day apprenticeship.

He found much was the same – and some things very different.

Leicester-based Mr Brown was in Blackburn to experience a “Day in the Life of” a steel erecting apprentice.

He said: “I helped Sam make the handle for a tool box according to precise specification. It reminded me of my days as an RAF technician apprentice when I was 20.

“I had to do something very similar to the toolbox Sam was making.

“It’s all about working from precise drawings and specifications, marking up and getting things just right.

“I like to think I might have helped him with my experience.

“Some things like basic hands-on skills are just the same as they were in my day. They are really important and apprenticeships are vital to the future of young people and industry, providing the skills needed and giving young people the opportunity to take those skills all over the world.

“Then I went next door to see the project control apprenticeships who were using a 3D printer to make new support brackets for the Royal Blackburn Hospital.

“It was great to see the apprentices doing something practical and useful to help the local health service.

“However, it was a new and different world for me.

Sam said: “It was really nice of him to help me and he was a good listener. I’d definitely hire him.”

Mr Brown was supporting National Apprenticeship Week.

Training 2000, which works closely with ECITB, is a not-for-profit organisation and one of the UK’s largest independent training providers in the country.