Higher Diploma in Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics

Day 0: graduation with the Capability Transcript, the mentor's reference, a capstone with measured security effect, the moot court testimony assessment, and the external panel's evaluation.

Days 1 to 30: employed route: three arranged interviews in a market where senior security vacancies remain open for months. Remote and consulting route: profiles and assurance service listings live; the mentor reviews rate setting.

Days 31 to 90: employed route: probation support from the practice tutor. Practice route: referral listing for partner overflow assessment, testing and forensic engagements, standing terms in the partnerships.

Measurement: employment, consulting or trading status recorded at day 90 and published in the annual outcomes report, per Part Two, section 2.9. PART SIX INSTITUTIONAL DELIVERY How the twenty eight programmes of Parts Three, Four and Five are actually brought into being: the phased rollout, the staffing establishment, the facilities and capital plan, the operating economics, the partnerships on which work based learning depends, and the quality assurance and evaluation systems that will hold the College to the promises this compendium makes. 6.1 Phased Rollout and Launch Sequence The College does not open with twenty eight programmes. It opens with seven and grows to the full portfolio over four years, and the sequence is determined by three things: which occupations the labour market is most urgently short of, which programmes share facilities so that early capital is used twice, and which awards depend on feeder programmes that must exist first. The third consideration governs the Higher Diplomas. FC-H01, FC-H02, FC-H03 and FC-H06 are entered from Diplomas that the College must first be graduating, which places them in Phase Four. FC-H04 and FC-H05 are exceptions and arrive in Phase Three, because both are one year conversions designed for people already employed in construction and health technology who hold existing diplomas from other institutions, so their intake does not depend on the College's own pipeline. Phase Timing New Programmes New intake programmes launched Phase One Year one of 7 FC-C01, FC- 210 learners operation C05, FC-C08, Phase Two Year two of 7 FC-C02, FC- 210 learners operation C06, FC-C07, Phase Three Year three of 7 FC-C03, FC- 210 learners operation C04, FC-D02, Phase Four Year four of 7 FC-D04, FC- 210 learners operation D05, FC-D08, Cumulative enrolment builds as cohorts overlap. The table below models steady state on the planning assumption of one cohort of thirty per programme per year, with two year awards carrying two cohorts concurrently. Phase Programmes New intake Total learners on running roll Phase One 7 210 270 Phase Two 14 210 630 Phase Three 21 210 990 Phase Four 28 210 1410 At full portfolio the College carries approximately one thousand four hundred and ten learners on roll. This is the planning figure against which staffing, facilities and operating costs in the sections that follow are calculated. Growth beyond that figure is achieved by adding parallel cohorts to programmes with proven demand rather than by adding programmes, since twenty eight is judged the practical ceiling for quality management at a single campus. THE ROLLOUT RULE No programme launches until its workshop is commissioned, its lead trainer is recruited and inducted, and at least eight industrial training partners have signed placement agreements for its first cohort. A programme that cannot meet all three conditions is deferred to the next phase rather than launched thin. This rule is binding and its application is reported to the Academic Board. 6.2 Staffing Establishment Every programme in Parts Three, Four and Five specifies its own trainer requirement in section 13 of its template entry. This section aggregates those requirements into an establishment and a recruitment sequence. The staffing model follows the ratios stated in each programme: one to twelve or one to sixteen in workshop and laboratory work depending on hazard, and one to thirty in theory. A cohort of thirty in a workshop based programme therefore requires a lead trainer plus two or three instructors, and those instructors are shared across programmes wherever facilities and disciplines overlap. 6.2.1 Academic establishment at full portfolio Role Posts Notes Principal 1 Overall leadership and Academic quality assurance and Enterprise training, graduate Lead trainer 28 One per programme, instructor programmes; the hazard tutor supervision, visits and Programme mentor 14 Learner progression, the Assessment and 4 Internal verification, inclusion officer wellbeing referral Academic establishment at full portfolio: one hundred and thirty four posts against approximately one thousand four hundred and ten learners, a ratio of about one academic staff member to eleven learners. That ratio is higher than a conventional lecture based institution requires and is a deliberate consequence of the compendium's hands on share, which sits between sixty nine and seventy six per cent across every programme. Workshop teaching is staff intensive; the compendium does not pretend otherwise. 6.2.2 Professional and support establishment Function Posts Notes technical support maintenance, stores catering operations where these Human resources 3 outreach outreach and the 6.2.3 Recruitment sequence and the trainer development pathway Lead trainers are recruited nine months before their programme launches and spend the final three months in curriculum induction, the College AI induction, workshop commissioning and partner negotiation. This lead time is not a luxury: a lead trainer who arrives with the first cohort has neither commissioned their workshop nor built their placement network, and the programme's first year is compromised. The College faces a real constraint in recruiting trainers who combine three ways. First, industrial practice is treated as the non negotiable requirement and instructor certification as the developable one, with the College funding pedagogical qualification for practitioners it recruits. Second, partner industries second practitioners to teach specialist modules under a lead trainer's moderation, which is written into the partnership agreements described in section 6.5. Third, the College's own Higher Diploma graduates are a designed source of future instructors, and the pathway from toward. CONTINUING INDUSTRIAL CURRENCY Every trainer is required to complete a minimum of ten days of industrial placement or documented industry engagement each year, and this is a condition of continued teaching assignment rather than a development aspiration. A trade trainer whose practice is five years stale is teaching the trade as it was, and in the occupations this compendium covers that is a serious harm to learners. 6.3 Facilities, Equipment and the Capital Plan Section 14 of each programme entry specifies its equipment schedule. Across the portfolio those schedules contain three hundred and thirteen distinct equipment lines. This section aggregates them into shared facilities, states what is genuinely shared, and sequences the capital spend against the rollout. 6.3.1 Facility clusters and sharing The portfolio is deliberately constructed so that expensive facilities serve several programmes. The sharing is not a cost saving applied after the fact; it is a design principle stated in the programme entries themselves, and it is one reason the compendium's programme mix looks as it does. Facility cluster Serves Principal shared assets Engineering and FC-C03, FC-C04, FC-D02, The integrated training automation hall FC-D03, FC-H02, FC-H03, plant, PLC and drives FC-H06 benches, robotics cell, yard materials testing microgrid benches, the training FC-H06 and staging environments, facility grain, dairy, fruit and laboratory calibration and safety operation kitchen, front office and workshop and finishing centre space supporting every 6.3.2 Capital sequencing Capital is committed phase by phase and never ahead of enrolment. Each phase commissions only the facilities its launching programmes require, plus the shared elements that later phases will extend. The pattern is that early phases carry the digital and hospitality clusters, which have lower capital intensity and faster enrolment, and the heavy engineering and processing clusters follow once the College's revenue base and partner network can support them. Phase Facilities commissioned Capital intensity Phase One Digital and AI laboratories Moderate; workstation Phase Two Agriculture and Moderate to high; Phase Three Energy laboratory and High; the microgrid and Phase Four Engineering and Highest; deferred 6.3.3 Consumables, maintenance and refresh Workshop based training consumes materials continuously, and the most common failure of technical institutions in the region is a well equipped workshop with no consumables budget, where equipment stands idle because there is no timber, no filament, no reagent and no fuel. The College treats consumables as a recurrent cost with a protected budget line calculated per learner per programme, not as a discretionary item to be cut when revenue is tight.