Holmesglen has secured more support from the industry, with MIS company PrintIQ supplying software for both its apprentices, and internal print department to use.
The Victorian Tafe is strongly backed by the industry, with Konica Minolta, DIC Inks, Visual Connections, and Ball & Doggett all providing equipment or consumables.
Paul Ross, programme manager, Printing, Holmesglen, explains, “We will be using PrintIQ’s costing and estimating software. They have assigned a couple of people within their business to build a skin for us, so when you log in you will see Holmesglen.
“Our intention is to use it with our apprentices first, and give them an appreciation of how much different things within a print business costs. We will set up mock job bags, mock clients, the students will choose the machine, put the job into a production workflow. They may have to go back to the client, and say you have supplied the wrong file format, I need it in X format.
“The person at the backend will deal with what stock the job will run on, how they will gang it up, which machine is available, and then send the client a quote.
“We will use that to cover competencies that we train in, but also give the apprentices a bigger picture of the work that gets done. There are people upstream and downstream from you, and you need to meet the needs of a client.
“They get practice of working out how long it takes to complete a print job including finishing, and cost. They might say it takes three hours, I will tell them go ahead and do it, then they learn the difference between planned and actual job times.
“This is the first time something like this has been a part of print training that I have seen in the past 20 years.
“The other benefit for apprentices is that when they see their employer and ask for a pay rise, and the employer says why, how much do you do and why do you think you deserve it, they can understand how the owner sees the business, and all the different cost centers that exist.”
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