Inside look at 3 competitor journeys to WorldSkills Lyon 2024

Late last year, Isabelle (Izzy) Barron proudly stood on the podium at EuroSkills 2023 to receive her gold medal in digital construction. For her, it was simply an incredible moment achieving this huge goal with the scale of the competition. But there’s one more goal she’s setting her sights on: WorldSkills Lyon 2024.

Izzy's road to digital construction began in college where she discovered her love for design, mathematics, and physics. This passion led her to pursue a degree in architectural technology at Sheffield Hallam University that perfectly blended her interests. "I loved design, but also the more technical, mathematical side," she says.

During her time at university, Izzy was first introduced to Autodesk Revit and AutoCAD. One of her lecturers, Geoff Olner, highlighted WorldSkills, describing it as the "Olympics for skills." Intrigued, she decided to start participating in WorldSkills UK competitions, a decision that would open new doors that she couldn’t imagine.

Izzy will soon compete in the digital construction category at WorldSkills Lyon 2024. Each weekend she’s diligently training with Michael McGuire, digital construction lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University and WorldSkills UK training manager, all while working full-time as a digital construction consultant at WSP, a world-leading, multi-disciplinary professional services consulting firm. In fact, she wouldn’t have even known this role existed if it hadn’t been for WorldSkills.

“Right after university, I went straight into a job as an architectural technologist from what I’d directly studied,” she says. “But through the WorldSkills competitions I discovered the BIM manager roles and doing more things with model coordination and documentation. I found through the competition that you could do that as a job and helped me change direction to do what I love.”

Izzy didn’t immediately leap into skills competitions, but she recommends everyone to “give it a go because you don’t know what good could come out of it.”

“When I first heard of the competition, I was quite hesitant,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t have time and I have all these assignments.’ But it's opened me up to a new career and this whole other world. For any skills competition, it can give you the most incredible experience and really accelerate your knowledge in a completely different way.”

Like Izzy, Basile Menassol is also a gold medalist, but he won it for mechanical engineering at the French national competition last year. He has been intently training ever since to compete in the mechanical engineering category at WorldSkills Lyon 2024. And he’s ready to experience that “podium moment” again.

“When they call the names for the final podium, you don’t know your ranking,” he says. “They called the second-place winner, and it wasn’t me. And then when they called me for first place…it was just the best sensation in the world. It takes a lot of work, but it’s amazing.”

Basile is currently in his fourth year of engineering school with a full-time apprenticeship at a company specializing in the design and manufacturing of medical devices. He first started participating in competitions when a professor recognized his potential. However, Basile had only used Autodesk Inventor in school. But he quickly learned Autodesk Fusion and has made it his tool of choice.

For Basile, it’s one thing to gain new technical skills. But he also appreciates the “soft skills” that the team learns with kindness, support, and teamwork. These components combined have helped him as he embarks on his career. And, thanks to WorldSkills, he’s had a new level of experience that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Basile also encourages others to give skills competitions a try. “Even if you don’t have any CAD skills, just try it and you’ll learn a lot with your coach,” he says. “Yes, it will give you a lot of skills. But you’ll also learn a lot about life and the possibilities in front of you.”

Oscar McNaughton spent three years of his undergraduate studies as a designer maker at the University of Plymouth, exploring spatial design, product design, and even traditional wood, ceramics, and glass crafts. But a turning point came when the university opened a digital fabrication lab with 3D printers, a range of laser cutters, FDM printing, and two SLA printers. "3D printing and scanning really sparked my interest,” he says.

Oscar went on to complete his Masters degree in design, where he continued to develop his skills in additive manufacturing. His projects focused on the relationships between traditional craft and digital technologies and culminated in a collection of large-scale, 3D-printed clay ceramic vessels.

Following his degree Oscar moved back to South Wales and joined CBM Wales, an advanced manufacturing facility that’s based in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David campus in Swansea. His role as a design technician involves a wide range of tasks, from managing design projects to vacuum casting and working with medical implants.

Oscar’s entry into the world of competitive skills began somewhat unexpectedly. He’d never heard of WorldSkills during school. It was his manager at CBM—Lee Pratt who is also a WorldSkills UK competition organizer for CNC—who encouraged him to give it a try.

This inspiration led him to enter the national qualifiers for additive manufacturing where he secured a silver medal, propelling him to the international stage. Oscar has trained tirelessly with his WorldSkills UK training manager Bryn Jones, and recently flew to France to complete a pressure test with a French competitor.

Participation in the WorldSkills UK competitions has had a profound impact on his career. But it’s not just the new technical skills he’s acquiring with Autodesk Fusion—it’s the soft skills too. “With Team UK, we are learning a lot about teamwork and dealing with stress,” Oscar says. “We’ve done sessions that help us get out of our own comfort zones in more structured ways. For me, confidence building and maintaining a healthy mindset can be game changing at this level.”

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