$38.3 million Mining and Engineering Centre at TAFE takes shape Artist's impression of the $38.3 million Mining and Engineering Centre at TAFE SA Regency by Hansen and Yuncken. WORK is well under way at the new $38.3 million Mining and Engineering Centre for TAFE SA at Regency Park. Construction has started on a new Greenway Architect-designed structure - with an abstract tyre tread feature wall - that will house automotive and geoscience studies. An existing mechanical engineering training building is also being overhauled, with Hansen Yuncken undertaking the $30.4 million construction contract. The new building includes a large sheltered area for mining industry trucks and vehicles used for training. Alison Roberts has been appointed director of the new site starting on April 29. The new TAFE site is targeting the mining, engineering, advanced manufacturing, defence and transport industries. Ms Roberts said the new centre would build close links to industry, create demonstration projects and instigate "collaboration we might not have seen before." "That will be the key to this centre that it's very, very central to the industry," she said. It would initially cater for 3000 full and part-time students, with plans to build on numbers. The courses based at the overhauled campus were carefully selected to allow cross-pollination between trade areas, and Ms Roberts said it recognised that young people learning trades would move between sectors depending on growth in various industries. "We expect to have our people prepared in a really competitive way," Ms Roberts said. Ms Roberts said once the centre was completed in mid-2014, mechanical engineering will have moved back from a temporary Croydon TAFE site and that campus would be closed. Electrical engineering and plumbing will move from Regency Park to a new Tonsley facility and the heavy vehicles and geoscience courses will move to Regency Park so the O'Halloran Hill campus can be closed. Employment, Higher Education and Skills Minister Grace Portolesi said the centre would help meet training needs of the 25,000 new workers projected to be needed by mining, engineering and allied industries over the next five years. Programs include heavy vehicle transport and diesel mechanics, geoscience and mining, mechanical and civil engineering, surveying and spatial information services, welding and fabrication and automotive and light vehicle transport. The Government has also committed $120 million to the Sustainable Industries Education Centre at Tonsley Park.