Offaly-based clean room operations training paves way for jobs in industry

BASIC skills which are vital for anyone wishing to work in Ireland's burgeoning tech and med tech sectors are taught at LOETB's centre in Axis Business Park, Tullamore.

The Midland Skills Centre is home to a clean room, a facility similar to one which any general operative will find in big industry names from Intel to Zoetis.

Sarah Delaney runs the clean room operations training course at LOETB in Tullamore and she explains that many operations in modern industry, even the production of microchips, rely on contamination-free systems.

Any fragments of dust from skin, tiny amounts of dirt, or bacteria, would render the product or component being manufactured unusable, hence the existence of the clean room.

An air handling unit is key to how every clean room works. It is essentially an air filtration machine which has a HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter which filters out units the size of microns Classifications of clean rooms vary and the Tullamore clean room has 50 air changes an hour but they can go as high as 800.

Sarah teaches a level 5 module on the basics of clean room operations, including gowning up and degowning.

Trainees learn how to properly don PPE, correct handwashing, and why movements are controlled in a particular way.

“All people and objects move in a designated direction in a clean room to minimise contamination and any risk to the product you're producing,” Sarah explained.

It's no surprise that the surfaces in the clean room itself have to be cleaned a couple of times a day.

There are correct techniques for all tasks in a clean room and each facility has basic equipment such as incubators or microscopes, both of which are used in the area of micro biology and bacteria and fungi.

“You learn basic skills to bring you to a general operative level in some manufacturing areas,” explains Sarah. “So students and learners are really familiar with all this before they go out to industry.”

Crucially, the LOETB clean room mimics real life applications, preparing trainees for job entry: “It's exactly how a real life clean room would look so they'd have a good idea if they're going out to work in industry.”

Students in applied science with the LOETB in Tullamore or bio science at the further education centre in Abbeyleix can come to Tullamore for their clean room operations module, as can community learners from places like Edenderry.

During Science Week students from the LOETB Youthreach centres (there are centres in Clara, Mountmellick, Banagher and Edenderry) were invited to have a look at the clean room and some simple skills and experiments were imparted, all with a view to ascertaining if anyone would be interested in undertaking the full module.

“A lot of people feel that clean rooms, med tech, the pharma industries, are perhaps out of their reach. I'm trying to break it down to students that anyone can work in this industry.”

The clean room is used by trainees in other disciplines. For example, the electrical apprentices use it because many of them will go on to work in companies like Pfizer and Intel and if machines need servicing, fixing or maintenance the electricians must understand how to come in and out of a clean room.

The apprentices can add clean room operations to their list of achievements on a CV.

“Not that many ETBs have a clean room so we're giving our apprentices a little advantage.”

The LOETB works closely with industry and students at TUS Athlone (formerly AIT) also use the facility.

Bord na Mona's departure from peat-based activities has resulted in some redundancies and employees leaving the company have also availed of clean room training.

Jolene Hall, training manager at the LOETB explained: “Companies come to us and have a training requirement and we work with them in developing a response to that.”