ASHLAND — Work on Ashland County-West Holmes Career Center’s new Robotics Automated Manufacturing Technology Educational Collaborative (RAMTEC) Center is progressing on schedule says ACWHCC Supt. Mike McDaniel.
After receiving a $435,000 RAMTEC grant early in 2016, the school district began executing plans to convert current lab space into a high-tech robotics and manufacturing training center for both high school and adult education students. The RAMTEC Center brings high school programs in Manufacturing Technology and Engineering and Design Technology and Adult Education’s Maintenance Training and Welding programs together in the same arena allowing them to interact and share the Center’s new robotics, designing, advanced manufacturing, machining and welding equipment.
The project has meant major renovation to space that originally housed the school’s Machine Trades and Welding lab programs. The changes include the moving of block walls, creation of two integrated flexible classrooms, placing for various pieces of industry grade equipment to be utilized for training, and cutting two large windows into the exterior west wall of the building.
Simonson Construction, the general contractor for the project, is projecting that the renovation will be complete by July 18 and that date meshes well with the delivery of the advanced manufacturing equipment that will start arriving around July 10.
Said High School Principal Rod Cheyney, “At the end of April, parents of students who are enrolled in these programs didn’t believe we could have the Center ready so quickly but it is happening. The Manufacturing Technology teaching position is close to being filled and everything will be in place before the start of the school year.”
According to McDaniel, when work on the main section of the Center is complete, the adjacent Adult Education Maintenance Training and Welding Technology area also will be undergoing some upgrading as it is absorbed into the RAMTEC Center.
