TIS Academy apprentices have been crowned Ultimate Apprentices in a national fire and security engineering competition hosted by Skills for Security at the NEC, in Birmingham.

The competition challenges competitors to showcase their engineering expertise, teamwork, and communication skills, and improve their knowledge and experience.

Apprentices Michael Romano and Jack Kempson (pictured) were required to complete installations across multiple system types with assessment based on their equipment selection, technical engineering, standard of installation, termination and configuration, compliance checking, and documentation.

The winning TIS team won a £1,000 prize to share.

TIS, an independent life safety, security and communications systems integrator, launched its Apprenticeship Academy in 2021 to address the engineering skills shortage and create youth job opportunities across its offices in Mansfield, Nottingham, Coleshill, Leeds and Uxbridge.

James Twigg, chief executive of TIS, said: “We’re very proud of what Jack and Michael have accomplished in this apprenticeship challenge. It’s a fantastic showcase for the whole TIS Academy team, from apprentices through to trainers and support staff.

“It was important for us as a business to launch the academy and renew our commitment to deliver highly-skilled individuals across our growing and demanding business.

“It’s fantastic to see our apprentices demonstrating their talent and being recognised for their hard work.”

Jack added: “I think the Skills for Security challenge was a great opportunity to participate in and gain additional practical experience across a range of new systems we haven’t worked on before.

“The competition element was interesting as it put us into new situations we hadn’t faced with unfamiliar technologies.

“Fortunately, we were able to put into practice the knowledge we’ve gained from the academy to figure out how to complete the technical specification. To win the competition was an added bonus.”