Supported by Fasset and based at Hersham Place Technology Park,
Hersham the first round of this exciting competition commenced. 20
year 12 & 13 students from RES started on their journey to be
crowned the next R E S Apprentice. Fasset Account Manager Mitch
Avis very kindly offered to support this competition once again and
comments
“Fasset has supported this competition for the last 4 years and
is delighted to again be part of this exciting
business challenge”.
After a tour of Hersham Place by Mitch the task was set. The
student’s task worked in groups of 4 and had to plan
and implement the launch of their newly refurbished conference
facility based at Hersham Place.
Students had to come up with a suitable plan involving finances,
operations, branding and marketing. Students
had to consider their competitors, their price, facilities that
made them better than the competition, their USP and
how they were going to launch and make people in the local area
aware of this new facility. They also had to give
their new conference facility an eye catching and memorable
name. After a morning’s hard work and
brainstorming ideas over a working lunch in turn each group
faced the judges and presented their ideas to Mitch
Avis and Richard Berry of Fasset.
It was an enormously tough and close first round with one team
being fired in true Apprentice style. The overall winning team of
the day were made up of year 12 students Matt Cross & Preslava
Ivanova and Charlie Dryden. 15 students now go through to the 2nd
round which takes place on the 9th and 10th October at the Crowne
Plaza Hotel, Heathrow. R E S staff and students would like to thank
Mitch Avis and Richard Berry for their support and use of their
facilities during the day. We will be welcoming back Mitch who will
be a judge in the Final which returns to The Auditorium @ Hersham
Place Technology Park on Friday 28th February 2014 from
12.15pm.
Comments from Mitch “The students get better every year and this
in his opinion was the best group yet and a
real credit to RES. Shaping the future of business in the region
is key to its sustainability and long term growth. To
achieve this we need to support and nurture young talent and
this is a great opportunity to see those rising starts
in action “.
Hersham Place Technology Park is located in the Borough of
Elmbridge in Surrey. Currently there are 31 companies located
onsite, with 800 people doing business daily. Anchor occupier Air
Products awarded regional parks operator Fasset the contract to
transform their 170,000 ft2 site into a multi-tenanted business
park. Full tenant listing is available on www.hershamplace.com
The Park can also accommodate longer term leases, with bespoke
space solutions available from 1,200ft2 to 5,650 ft2, in
collaboration with letting agents Hurst Warne.
All sales enquiries: www.hershamplace.com
Fasset Business & Property Solutions - Hersham Place
Technology Park, Molesey Road, Hersham, Walton on Thames, Surrey.
KT12 4RZ. Kind sponsors of the first round and the final of the RES
Apprentice 2014 Competition.
The 2nd round of this exciting competition took place on 9th and
10th October. The 14 students that made it through the first round
were given their task to work on over the 2 days. The IHG
(Intercontinental Hotel Group) is one of the largest hotel
management companies in the world and its role is to make all
hotels under its banner run as smoothly and as successfully for the
owners as possible. Set by Greg Starks (Executive Chef) at the
Crowne Plaza London Heathrow, the students were tasked with coming
up with and creating either a new idea for use in the 3 IHG hotels
or develop something they already do to make it even better.
Students were encouraged to source local companies (within a 15
mile radius) to source any of the raw materials that they would
need for their idea. Students also had to consider and work out how
they would package, promote and price their product. During day 1
of the task students were put into groups and worked in the
Business & Enterprise Suite at RES researching what the hotel/s
currently offer and brainstorming new ideas that they could bring
in to the hotels. They did as much groundwork they could towards
this task and started work on their presentation to take with them
to the hotel the next day. Students were to be judged on their
innovation and ideas, packaging and marketing, financial
implications, their teamwork, presentation and the overall
effectiveness of their idea. On day 2 we travelled to the Crowne
Plaza, Heathrow. Met by Greg we were taken to our room for the day
for students to continue with the task. They had to work to a very
tight schedule as they were all informed that presentations were to
be at 12 o’clock sharp. Each team had a timed 5 minutes to present
their ideas to the judges which were made up of Martin Vann (GM
Heathrow Cluster), Shobhit Sawnhey (Hotel Manager, Crowne Plaza
Heathrow), Marc Sassen (Cluster Financial Controller), Vipul Kapur
(Food & Beverage Manager Crowne Plaza Heathow) & Greg
Starks. Enjoying a revolving lunch in the hotel, each team took it
in turns to present nervously to the 5 strong team of judges. Team
1 (Charlie Dryden & Jasmin Roberts) looked to update the
current breakfast menus, using locally sourced produce from Garsons
Farm in Esher. Team 2 (Laura Keen, Munya Dube & Charlie Brace)
Fly-by-fitness was their idea in which visitors to the hotel could
take part in gym classes and personal training sessions. Team 3
(Nafseer Meghjee, Hayeigh Kay & Josh Sheppard) idea was
‘Lunches on the Go’ – a small happy meal type lunch box that was
available to children staying at the hotel if they were going out
for the day visiting local attractions. Team 4 (Preslava Ivanova,
Shannon Church & Rodrigo Paniagua Cruz), wanted to introduce
‘Just like home’ hampers in each hotel room themed for any
celebration such as a birthday, anniversary or other celebration.
Team 5 (Matt Cross, Alex Patel & Brendon Sarnyai) wanted to
look at changing the wine suppliers and use locally produced
British wine from the Denbies Estate in Dorking. After much thought
and deliberation Greg welcomed all teams back into the seminar room
for the results. Students waited nervously for the outcome but 2
teams knew that they would be fired today. Team 2 & Team 4 were
fired with Team 3 being announced as the overall winner of the day
with their idea of ‘Lunches on the Go’ for children which is
something the hotels are keen to look to take further. A slight
twist to the end in that 1 student that impressed the judges the
most from the 2 fired teams would be chosen to go through to the
next round. Well done to Shannon Church for being selected to
remain in the competition.
At the end of the day Greg took us on a tour of the hotel and
wowed students with the presidential suite available at the hotel,
the restaurants and gym/swimming facilities. We were also taken on
a very interesting tour of the hotel’s kitchen and met some of the
kitchen staff. We are very grateful to Greg and the other members
of staff at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for taking their time to host
this round of the competition and for offering us the use of their
facilities. We look forward to welcoming back Greg to judge the
final in February 2014.
The 3nd round of the RES Apprentice took place on 29th November
and 1st December. This is the last round and would determine who
was going to go through to the grand final which takes place on the
28th February 2014. We headed off to IBM Hursley. This site
contains the “Emerging Technology Services” team. Part of the IBM
Software Group’s Strategy and technology division, this worldwide
organisation focuses on Emerging Technology and its use in
satisfying the business needs of customers by providing innovative
technical solutions across a wide range of business areas. ETS
fuses direct experience of working with customers with innovation
and first-of-a-kind technology to produce a compelling value
proposition. ETS are much more than a services organisation. They
provide architectural consultancy, produce solutions, demos, proof
of concepts, pilot systems and reference architectures ensuring
that they take the time and feed their knowledge and experiences
back into the development organisations. Having arrived at IBM
Hursley we were met by Ian Leonard, Client Director – Travel &
Transport Industry. We were taken to our room for the day in the
beautiful and historic 18th century Hursley House, a Grade II
listed building which was a wonderful venue to work on this final
task. After welcoming us and introducing us to “rocket scientist”
Dr Peter Waggett, Director of Emerging Technology Services, Ian
gave us a background of IBM, the history of the site and talked us
through what takes place there. Students then had the fantastic
opportunity of visiting the Emerging technologies lab in which they
were shown and had the chance to play with some of the new
technologies that are currently being developed for businesses
already by IBM. Students played on a huge table sized tablet and
had great fun with the brain operated headset in which they could
make a toy car move using just their brain power! In pairs the
student’s task was to choose one of five emerging technologies
being developed already by IBM for businesses and come up with and
then present an alternative potential market of selection of
businesses that one of these could then be sold to and ultimately
stand the best chance of success. Students set to task and spent
the afternoon asking lots of questions and brainstorming different
ideas taking into account that were going to be judged on a number
of key areas during their presentations such as innovation,
business application, business reach and overall presentation and
questioning. Students took all their ideas home
