As the new school year starts and the nights start drawing in I start thinking about autumn, and all the lovely celebrations leading up to Christmas, Like Halloween and bonfire night, and for some reason when I start thinking about winter time approaching, it also makes me think about the past year and the summer that now seems like it was such a long time ago!!
It’s been a busy and exciting summer for all the team here at PaintTech, we’ve not really stopped since January we’ve just been flat out delivering courses all year. But one thing we did do this year was to schedule in a staff development week, where all the team could get together to strategise for 2025 and to just generally spend some good quality time together.
This year it worked out particularly well as we had been notified that we had we had won the Innovation & Excellence award for the ‘Trades Education Specialist of the year’ for the third year in a row, and the awards ceremony took place right in the middle of our development week which meant most of the team were able to attend.
I’m sure I speak for everyone in the team when I say how proud and humbled I am that the academy won this prestigious award yet again. We have now been inducted to the Prestige Awards Hall of Fame!
You may be wondering where I’m going with this but just bear with me……
When we started the academy in 2016 we did have big hopes and dreams, of course we did, but I don’t think any of us actually realised just quite how big it would grow, we started off as a team of four and now, if you include our part time tutors and staff as well we are now a team of twelve.
Over the years we have worked really hard to develop our courses and bring the cutting edge technologies and techniques into everyday practice, if you look how many people were spraying in 2016 compared to how many there are now there has been a huge increase, and it’s only going to keep growing as spraying becomes just as normal as using a roller.
We don’t just offer spraying courses, but they do form a large part of our curriculum. Our goal was always to revolutionise the decorating industry, in every aspect possible, and we do believe that we are making in-roads into that with the wide variety of courses we offer. Teaching decorators and other tradespeople how to improve their skills is something that still makes me smile everyday, I never get up and think I don’t want to go to work because I truly believe that what we do matters, and it does make a difference to other peoples lives.
So you may wonder how it all started?
Back in 2015 Ian and Pete had been chatting on social media about the possibility of running courses for spraying, at the time no one else was doing this and they could both see the huge skills gap that needed to be plugged. The pair of them were already being asked on a regular basis if they could teach people how to spray, but you can’t help everybody who asks you unless you can make the time.
Ian was full time running PaintTech Decorators and Pete was part time at the local college and part time on site, it kind of seemed impossible, but after meeting at the P&D show and then spending some time together, the four of us, Ian, Lyndsey, Pete & me (Tracey) figured out that we could make the time if we gave up some of our weekends, that’s when we could run our courses as most people wouldn’t want to lose time during the working week anyway.
Our main focus was to get people spraying, and I think we certainly achieved that.
Over the first couple of years the courses grew so popular that we were running them every weekend, so we decided to expand and go “all in” running courses during the week. Now the academy is running near enough seven days a week with a mixture of different courses available every week.
Over the years we have expanded, but at the moment we are back to basics with just our two main centres in Preston, and Edenbridge, plus our new Cambridge Hub.
The team has grown, then shrunk, then grown again! But there has always been the key constant people at the helm, keeping us steady.
We have had our ups and downs as all businesses do, but we are still here doing what we love and always planning for the future, so watch this space because we have got all sorts in store for you in 2025! I can’t say too much about that at the moment as we are launching a lot of our new stuff at the Painting & Decorating show, and we want to keep it a surprise until then, so if you want to be one of the first to find out what we’ve coming up then make sure to stop by and see us at the National Painting and Decorating show on 19th & 20th November at the Coventry Building Society Arena – Stand 82.
Winning awards and hearing the wonderful feedback from our learners is truly what keeps us motivated to do more, and it really does mean a lot to us to get recognition for what we do. We will take every little win, because they all matter, it means that someone somewhere has thought enough of us to nominate us, and that’s really wonderful.
So when you’re thinking about booking a course, and you’re thinking to yourself why should I choose PaintTech Training Academy?
I would say book with PaintTech because we are the original Academy that designed and was delivering our courses before any other independent Academy, and we continue to review and develop those in line with industry standards and what’s going on in the real world. We know Painting & Decorating inside out and we always ensure our courses are streetwise and will give you the confidence to take your new skills into your business.
Our tutors are fully qualified teachers and fully qualified in the trade, with many years of experience both in the classroom as well as on site, you’ve got real decorators who understand your business in exactly the same way as you do so they will always give you the best advice, guidance and support.
We sit on education committees and are involved in a number of projects behind the scenes that ensures we are delivering quality training for you and your business, we are not just an academy that decided because we can Paint & Decorate that we could teach others, we actually do have the skills, knowledge and experience to be able to do this.
We are a CITB Approved Training Organisation, a City & Guilds centre and we were previously accredited with IOSH centre status for our work in developing a safe sanitisation of surfaces course during the Covid pandemic.
We are independent, so we don’t try to sell you any particular brands, we give honest advice on a variety of paints, equipment and tools/sundries and we will always be honest with you. We are also very innovative and have designed and developed in house with our own team a Virtual Reality spraying simulator. Our goal with that is to be able to train from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world and also to entice our young people into a career in Decorating, showcasing to them just how times have moved on and how it’s a great time to be a Decorator.
We will support you from your initial enquiry, so if you are looking to access funding, we can help sort all of that out for you (subject to eligibility of course), and we even support you after your course as well, so you’ve always got a helping hand to guide you on your journey once your back on your job sites.
And finally…….. we are multi award winning, so don’t just take our word for it, ask around and read our reviews.
We’re thrilled to announce that PaintTech Training Academy is also a finalist in the “Training Initiative of the Year” category at the On The Tools Awards. We’re honoured to be recognised again, and we’ll find out on awards night if we’ve won. Fingers crossed!
We would love to see you on a course in the near future, so if you haven’t already just get in touch with us for an informal chat about your training needs and we can advise you on the best course(s) for your needs.
So thanks for reading, I just wanted to share some thoughts on how I feel about winning the award, why I feel that we did deserve it and exactly why you should choose us as your training provider, if you’ve made it this far then I must have kept you hooked enough which is great, maybe I should write a book……. Oh hang on….. best leave that to Pete!
As a side note if you do want to check out any of the books for the Decorating industry written by our very own Pete Wilkinson just search “Fast and flawless” on Amazon, and all the available titles will come up.
Let’s make 2025 the year you take your skills to the next level!
Call: 0800 246 1167 and speak to Keith
Email: courses@PaintTechTrainingAcademy.co.uk and speak to Tracey
Fill out the form below and we will get back to you asap.
