THUNDER BAY – The new $19-million building on Confederation College is on target to be finished during the coming months and to be ready for the start of the next school year.

Construction on the Technology, Education and Collaboration (TEC) Hub, which is connected to the McIntyre Building near the William Street entrance to the campus, has progressed throughout the year to the point where it is now fully enclosed.

Confederation College president Jim Madder said the 45,000-square-foot space will allow the school to enhance its industry skills and sustainability instruction, advanced manufacturing technology and innovation and incubation.

“Everything from working with our First Nations partners of doing introductory levels of skills that could lead to trades in a whole variety of fields, we just don’t have the space and the type of equipment to have that occur,” Madder said on Friday at a news conference announcing the building’s construction status.

“Larger manufacturing, greater diversity in the types of manufacturing programs that we have being able to serve our regional manufacturers. A lot of our work with teaching manufacturing students is to do projects for industry and to do projects with industry. Prototyping for industry itself, doing those initial productions of them just to make sure their ideas will work as well.”

The new building will house the college’s existing engineering technology programs and allow for the relocation of the aerospace manufacturing program. There will also be space for skilled trades programming, with a particular focus on Indigenous students.

Keep reading on tbnewswatch.com