Southampton apprentices push out the boats for Land Rover BAR

by Land Rover BAR on 7 Oct 2015 Six apprentices from the Marine Skills Centre at City College Southampton enjoyed a very special day. They joined the Land Rover BAR sailing crew and shore team for the official handover of two specialised Docking RIBs that they and 60 of their colleagues have built for the team.

Land Rover BAR have used the construction as a case study to test their newly developed analysis of the carbon footprint of marine manufacture. The aim is to better understand material selection and its environmental impact in boat production, a first step to producing a model that will better inform the marine industry about the sustainability of the choices that they make. The full case study will be published in the near future, and the team hope to make the model widely available.

The materials chosen created a 20% saving in carbon across the two boats, and included flax (a plant material that has been used in marine applications for thousands of years); epoxy bonding resins with high biomass content (50+%); and a recyclable PET core material that comes from plastic bottles. The equivalent of over 700 water bottles were recycled in the manufacture of the G-PET core used in the construction of the two boats.

The project also gave the apprentices the opportunity to work with the new materials. They are mostly level two and level three apprentice boat builders and engineers, studying for City and Guilds qualifications. The college's marine lecturer, Darren Patten rotated the young people so the highest possible number of students had the opportunity to work on the project, practicing the different speciality skills involved in building the mould, composite construction, fairing, painting, and fitting the boats out with tubes, electronics and engines – the latter from the team's Technical Supplier, Yamaha.

The Docking RIBs have a highly innovative design, powered by a centrally positioned outboard that can be rotated through 360 degrees to push the boat in any direction. This makes them very manoeuvrable, an important asset when they are used to help the America's Cup Class boats into their berths.

Danielle Thomas is one of Land Rover BAR's own boat building apprentices, and she worked on the Docking RIBs as part of her coursework at the College. 'This is such a memorable career moment for me and I'm still only an apprentice,' said Danielle. 'I can't believe I am working on a project for one of the world's greatest sailing teams, Land Rover BAR. My ultimate goal is travel the world, building high-profile, high performance boats. That's the dream. But first, I'll finish my apprenticeship and get to see my fine work in action.'

Land Rover BAR's HR Manager, Joanna Despard commented, 'We have launched our apprentice and training programmes this year, and we will be rolling them out and expanding them into 2016 and onwards. At Land Rover BAR we are all about inspiring young people into the marine industries, and this was a perfect project to get us underway.'

The team now has five apprentices working in the boat building, IT and marketing departments, with another two joining soon in finance and electronics. Eighteen work experience students - from a variety of schools and universities - have spent up to two weeks each with the team over the past summer, along with three graduate interns. The team have also been working with Portsmouth University on the carbon footprint in manufacturing research, and have helped five students complete their final thesis.

The team will be taking on new interns and work experience students from April 2016. Anyone interested in applying can fill in application forms at the following links, all applicants must have papers enabling them to work in the UK.