The College of West Anglia is ready to face skills gap head on, with its state of the art facilities, training programmes and industry trained staff. A recent report titled “The State of Engineering” produced by Engineering UK highlights the importance of engineering and skilled engineers and their vital contribution to the UK economy, £455.6 billion to UK GDP in 2014. The report shows how great UK engineering is and how it helps to mitigate the grand global challenges of climate change, aging populations, food, clean water and energy. The report also showed that in many areas of the country, education does not have either the current capacity or the required rate of growth needed to meet the forecast demand for skilled engineers by 2022. Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills comments in his foreword, ‘The Engineering UK Report continues to provide a valuable annual update on the state of the engineering sector. It reminds us of the talent our country possesses, the opportunities for economic growth, and the challenges we need to overcome if we are to realise this potential.’ The good news is that engineering enterprises have the potential to generate an additional £27billion per year from 2022 which is equivalent to the cost of building 1,800 secondary schools or 110 new hospitals. If the UK is to benefit economically from this, we will need to meet the forecasted demand for new vacancies in engineering enterprises in the same timescale. The College of West Anglia recognised the growth required and along with partners including Norfolk County Council, Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk, Cambridgeshire County Council and Fenland District Council, have invested heavily into its facilities and courses on offer. Including a £5.8m technology centre at the King’s Lynn campus opened in 2012 and a £7.2m centre at the Isle campus in Wisbech opened in 2013.  The new buildings offer facilities including engineering and electrotechnical and specialist commercial training areas. Head of faculty for technology at CWA, Stephen Lowery said: “The report confirms the challenges that we already know exist and this is even more prevalent here in East Anglia. There will be 2.56 million job opportunities in the UK between now and 2022, we want to be making sure that we as a college are supporting local employers by meeting their training needs and giving them opportunity to expand.” CWA currently has over 300 engineering apprentices across the two campuses, who are all employed with a range of local and national engineering and electrical companies. Head of Apprenticeships and Work Based Learning at CWA, Susie Massen said “Our engineering apprenticeships are designed to meet employer needs and current industry expectations. We have well established working relationships with many local companies, but are always interested in talking to businesses looking to expand their workforce or needing to re-train existing members of staff.”