Enginuity holds an annual celebration of the people and organisations whose commitment to engineering and manufacturing skills is safeguarding the future of our industries. This year’s event took place on 29th June, at the Park Plaza London Riverbank, and was attended by leaders from the UK’s engineering and manufacturing industries, including Rolls Royce, Siemens, BAE Systems, Legal and General, Airbus, Babcock, Bentley Motors and many more.

Anisha Roberts, Apprentice Technician at Williams Jet Tenders, won SME Apprentice of the Year award, sponsored by BAE Systems. This award recognises the success of an apprentice who made a stand-out contribution to the workplace of a small and medium sized organisation. Innovative thinking, commitment, and skills marks out this individual as someone who​ is set to pioneer inclusive innovation ​to the organisation and wider industry.

Anisha was committed to improving the company’s environmental sustainability, demonstrated through her pioneering work on a project to reuse waste fibreglass. Anisha said “it doesn’t matter how late you start, get stuck in and do something you love. I am really proud of myself for winning and that I am here to have this opportunity. Thanks to everyone for supporting to help me get to this point. It’s just amazing, I never thought I would be here!”

But the awards didn’t stop there for Anisha, who also walked away with the most prestigious award of the night – the Best of British Engineering Award which was decided on the evening, and awarded to just one of the individual winners from all of the other categories. Anisha was the stand-out winner as a great advocate for how life changing an apprenticeship can be and really showcases the benefits of working for an SME, working alongside one of the owners and being only 1 of 4 people in the company with a certain skillset. As a mum with two children and in her early thirties, she demonstrates that anyone can become an apprentice and thrive. Anisha is only in her second year of her apprenticeship but already she has been identified for greater things by the business. Anisha said “I hope this has a really positive impact on my career and inspires other people, old and young, to make them feel proud of what they can achieve.”

Williams has built a strong reputation for its Apprenticeship program, and continues to increase their apprentice intake with 3 new starters in September. They now employ 140 people and have a 100% retention rate. They were also Highly Commended as Oxfordshire Apprenticeship Employer of the Year at the OxLEP awards in May. The world’s leading jet tender manufacturer and UK’s biggest boat builder of its kind, producing 1,200 tenders a year, is based in land-locked Oxfordshire so relies on its Apprenticeship program to train their own staff to be skilled boat builders. John Hornsby, Founder and Manufacturing Director of Williams Jet Tenders, told us about his passion for training people and encouraging young people to go into boat building in a location away from the coast, saying “It’s a culture and an ethos within the business that we want to encourage youngsters. We need to take people who haven’t had previous boat building experience, invest in them and train them to boat the best possible boats.”