Academic Links
As well as working closely with customers, Avco maintains contact with a number of academic establishments, including Brunel University and Surrey University.
For many years the Avco’s premises were at the Science Park on Brunel University’s Runnymede campus. The company forged strong links with the University at that time. Avco adopted a policy of employing placement students during their penultimate year at Brunel and offering them sponsorship through the final year, with a view to their joining the company upon graduation. This has proved remarkably successful and has resulted in a strong and highly qualified development team and a very low turnover of staff.
Knowledge Transfer Partnership
Avco’s connection with Brunel University gave rise to Avco’s involvement with Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. These are three way partnerships between a Graduate Associate, a Knowledge Based Partner (The University) and an Industrial Partner (Avco).
The major achievement of the successful and ongoing projects so far has been a change in the orientation of Avco’s business towards Web Based Applications, Software as a Service and the Semantic Web Projects.
Key benefits of KTP include:
- Personal development and experience of the Associates
- Associates’ enhanced presentation skills
- A suite of hosted web applications, marketable as a service with a set of standard features, or specifically tailored to meet the needs of an individual organisation.
- Collaboration with Brunel and Surrey Universities on research into new technologies
- Research into cloud computing
- Knowledge of Content management Systems
- Research into technical literature
- Involvement with the Semantic Web
- Exposure to international projects