Skills Competition success for budding decorator

A 19-year-old from Bargoed has won third place in a painting and decorating ‘New Entrant’ category in the Welsh heats of the World SkillBuild competition.

Nicola Parker, from Coleg y Cymoedd, competed against learners from across Wales in a series of painting and decorating challenges designed to stretch the ability of each participant within a short five hour time period. Learners were required to work from a set design and perform technical skills including sharp cutting in brush skills, wall papering and stenciling.  

This year SkillBuild opened up the ‘New Entrant’ category for learners in their first year of college to compete against each other to celebrate the emerging talents of learners getting started in their trade.

The CITB SkillBuild Welsh Final is part of a series of competitions designed to celebrate vocational skills and create a highly skilled Welsh workforce for the future. The standard was particularly high for Welsh trades this year, with the winners going on to compete in the UK Final in Birmingham followed by the World Skillbuild competition in Russia in 2019. 

Held at NPTC Group of Colleges Neath and Swansea Campuses on Thursday 2nd June 2016, construction students travelled from colleges all over Wales to take part in the competition.  

Nicola, who is studying Level 1 Painting and Decorating at the Ystrad Mynach, said she is thrilled to have been placed at the competition: “Winning third place in this tough competition was a total shock. I was really nervous on the day, but also excited to be showing off my skills. I did a practice session with my tutor Mark Jones the week before and went through all my techniques until I felt confident and ready for the big day. I’d love to run my own business one day and taking place in the competition makes me feel like I’m one step closer.”

Martin Watkins, Head of Construction for Coleg y Cymoedd said: “The World SkillBuild Competition is a wonderful opportunity for students to compete on a national and international stage. It is important that we encourage as many learners as possible to compete, they have outstanding high level of skills.  This is a fantastic achievement for Nicola, we wish her well with the rest of her course and future competitions.”

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