A WATER company has continued its special partnership with five Warrington schools to help attract potential future engineers.

United Utilities will be working with 80 students from five schools across the town who are part of The Challenge Academy Trust (TCAT).

The mentors and students will be working together for over a period of 16 weeks to find engineering solutions to water and wastewater problems.

The special partnership between United Utilities and TCAT is now in its fifth year and was set-up to get young people interested in a STEM career.

Katie Moffatt, early careers project manager, said: “The key to getting young people interested, is by capturing their imagination that a career in the water industry is both exciting and challenging.

“We realise an ideal opportunity to showcase what we’re all about is to work more closely with the education sector.

“More than ever as the water industry deals with the challenge of climate change, and the company’s drive to carbon neutrality, attracting the next generation of creative, skilled people is key to the success of our business.”

Chris Hillidge, director of STEM at the Multi Academy Trust said, “Students across TCAT achieve excellent exam results in the STEM subjects and the collaboration with United Utilities allows the pupils to develop an extra set of valuable skills; teamwork, problem solving, influencing others & public speaking to name a few.

“For four months, our pupils work alongside an industry professional from United Utilities and gain a real insight into what working life as an engineer is like.

“We know that the project has real impact in moving our pupils into high value, well paid jobs in engineering and we thank United Utilities for their on-going commitment to the futures of young people in Warrington.”

The group of budding engineers under the supervision of mentors from United Utilities are currently working on a series of in depth and challenging water industry problems.

The programme will build-up to a special Dragons’ Den style business competition early next year.

Last year, Beamont Collegiate Academy officially opened the doors to its STEM Centre and FabLab, which United Utilities sponsored and is open to the public, businesses and pupils across the region.