2007’s influential Royal Society of Arts’ ‘Risks-to-Business’ debate, warned that UK’s skills shortage is a major issue that ‘won’t go away’. These concerns were re-ignited Europe-wide by the EU’s Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. Luxembourg’s, Ms Viviane Reding, said: "Shortfalls of qualified ICT practitioners slow down new ICT applications in the economy and draw away billions of euros of investment funds to dynamic emerging economies, where hundreds of thousands of new engineers are qualifying each year." The CBI also warns that the UK needs 2.4 million such workers in coming years and is already seeing firms struggling to recruit qualified staff.

PTC has been seeking to offer advanced digital product development IT solutions to both UK higher education and business markets. Seeing TIC as the UK’s leading, ‘new-style’ technology faculty straddling both sectors, PTC has opened its product development software treasure chest to the University. TIC has been equipped to undertake a three pronged response to the skills challenge.

The first prong of TIC’s attack is through its PTC Academy-led ‘Green-by-Design’ product development. This links product design through manufacturing processes to life in-service until it becomes redundant. The approach also maximises re-cycling at the end of product life – now as important for cars as cartons!

‘Green-by-Design’ relies on digital information from every product development stage; this leads to the second prong of the PTC Academy’s approach. Through use of advanced digital tools, a high-fidelity virtual design is developed. The data thus generated provides information to sustain the product’s efficient use throughout its service life - whether two months or twenty years. This is the basis of ‘hybrid manufacturing’ in which sustaining lifelong product-support is as important as its successful delivery, in the first place.

The third prong of the PTC Academy approach is rooted in TIC’s teaching role. For ‘Green-by-Design’ and digitally-based, product-lifecycle management to work effectively, relevant ICT skills are vital. TIC’s educational qualities added to PTC’s software programmes, will produce a partnership of strengths which will benefit ‘UK plc’. TIC’s wide ranging, knowledge-based technology education and business disciplines rely on effective ICT to apply them effectively. It teaches all the skills relevant to creating knowledge data-bases, holding them accessibly in operating systems and to devising computer networks enabling digital information to be shared within organisations and with collaborators.

Birmingham City University’s Vice Chancellor and TIC Chairman, Professor David Tidmarsh, said of the PTC agreement: “Our academy partnership with PTC accords with our mission to provide the highest-quality learning experience for students and our commitment to being an exemplar in working with business, the community and the professions.”

PTC’s Senior Vice President for Global Partners and Education, John Stuart, said: “Industry tells us graduates take 8-12 years to reach an IT-competence level of value to employers. PTC has been involved in major UK and US schools’ initiatives for years, engaging children with digital product development IT systems and collaborative teams from age 10. Our industrial customers such as Toyota, Airbus, Boeing and VW-Audi welcome this. The TIC agreement is a key UK-based ingredient in creating a European higher education delivery source for PTC’s technologies.”

TIC’s Chief Executive, Dr Barry Henley, commented: “The CBI warns that skilled ICT-related jobs will go overseas unless the number of UK graduates with worthwhile technology degrees soon doubles. This substantial PTC Academy investment will see TIC make a major contribution to achieving that.”