Training Solutions
Holdfast Training Services deliver training solutions for The Ministry of Defence. Contact us today to find out more about the services we deliver to support The Corps of Royal Engineers.
Our projects
At Holdfast Training Services, we have a number of projects to develop our training and deliver a variety of new learning programmes. See below to find out more about our current projects.
To keep up-to-date with more news stories across the RSME, please check out the latest edition of the RSME Matters magazine below.
"Holdfast Welcomes the Environmental Poster
Competition 2025 Winners"
Holdfast is proud to announce the successful visit of the Environmental Poster Competition 2025, welcoming the winning pupils from St Margaret’s Infant School and Riverside Primary School to the Royal School of Military Engineering on Wednesday, 16th July 2025.
The event recognised the creativity and environmental awareness of young students who submitted vibrant and impactful posters promoting sustainability and the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. Their work stood out for its originality and strong messaging, earning them a special visit to explore Holdfast’s sustainability initiatives.
During the visit, pupils engaged with several eco-friendly projects including the beehives, wormery, and allotments. Highlights of the day included getting hands-on with some worms and enjoying a session with the resident beekeeper, where students learned fascinating facts about bees and sampled some of the honey. The experience continued with gardening activities, where pupils sowed seeds to take home. One enthusiastic gardener accidentally planted their whole seed packet —but we’re optimistic about the results! They then harvested vegetables from the onsite garden and got to use these ingredients in a cookery workshop led by ESS chefs, resulting in a delicious lunch of colourful, homemade pizzas. The toppings were as creative as their posters—one pizza featured a smiley face made entirely of sweetcorn and peppers. The day was topped off with one of the students excitedly exclaiming "we saw a real life soldier not a pretend one"!
Holdfast extends its sincere thanks to ESS for their ongoing support of this ESG initiative and looks forward to future collaborations that continue to inspire environmental responsibility among young learners.
Holdfast Wins Gold at the
InfraRed ‘Creating Better Future Awards 2025’
We are proud to announce that Holdfast has been awarded a Gold Award at the InfraRed ‘Creating Better Future Awards 2025’—our third consecutive win! The ceremony took place in London on 12th June, where we were recognised for our impactful work in bringing technology enabled food donation to the local community through the Olio initiative (www.olioapp.com).
In collaboration with our soft services contractor, ESS, the Olio app is used to list surplus food items, making them available to local families in need. To date, this initiative has donated over 1,140 items, equating to 354 kilograms of edible food, and has supported more than 70 families in our local community.
This project represents a meaningful step forward in our commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. We are honoured to receive this recognition once again and remain dedicated to building a better, more sustainable future for all.
With many exciting ESG initiatives underway this year, we’re already looking forward to next year’s awards!
"Enhancing Facilities for Students with Severe Learning Difficulties at Portesbery School"
Holdfast Training is delighted to announce our collaboration with Portesbery School in Deepcut, aimed at significantly enhancing the school's facilities and resources for students with Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD).
New Shade and Shelter Areas: Holdfast’s Services Contract, Babcock, have installed some new shade and shelter areas. These additions provide essential protection from the elements, allowing students to comfortably enjoy outdoor activities in any weather. The new shelters create safe and shaded spaces for learning and play, greatly enhancing the overall school experience.
Picnic Benches: Holdfast commissioned MKC Training to produce three new picnic benches for the school grounds. These benches offer students a comfortable place to sit, eat, learn, and socialise during breaks. Designed to be durable and accessible, the benches ensure that all students can benefit from these new outdoor seating areas.
Donation of iPads: As part of our commitment to supporting education, Holdfast, in partnership with military personnel, has donated several iPads to Portesbery School. These iPads will be integrated into the classroom environment, providing students with tools to help develop their communication and independence. This donation aims to enhance the learning experience, making it more interactive and engaging for students with SLD.
This collaboration is a wonderful example of how partnerships can bring about meaningful change and support educational development. We are proud to contribute to creating a more inclusive and supportive learning environment at Portesbery School.
"Carpers for Veterans 2024"
Holdfast hosted its fifth annual ‘Carpers for Veterans Support’ fishing event at Oak Lakes Fisheries in Southminster last weekend, and are pleased to report that we have raised over £3k for Blind Veterans UK.
The event is organised and run by our Performance Manager, Mark Jobling, who also served in the Army for 30 years. His commitment and support for such a worthwhile charity is testament to the success of this annual event. Since the competition started 5 years ago, Mark has raised over £17k for Blind Veterans UK.
There were 18 anglers taking part and most were serving Royal Engineers or veterans, with the eldest being 65 and the youngest 25. The group signed up to take part in the 48-hour competition which saw them fight it out to catch the five biggest carp!
A big thank you to everyone who supported the event. It's not too late to make a donation and any monies, big or small are gratefully received - https://www.justgiving.com/page/mark-jobling-1706713713549 
"Summer care boxes for local community"
Holdfast were delighted to help a number of vulnerable families from St Margaret’s Infant School, Rainham with summer care boxes during the 6-week school holidays.
Each box contained a variety of food and toiletries which we hoped lightened the load of the weekly shop and gave the families spare funds to use for more enjoyable activities during the summer period!
Holdfast worked in collaboration with one of our secondary contractors, ESS, who shared the cost of each box with Holdfast and also did the delivery drops to the families each week. Thank you, ESS for your continued work in helping us support the local community - a job well done.
"Holdfast welcome the winners of the Environmental Poster Competition 2024"
Holdfast were delighted to welcome the winning pupils from St Margaret’s Infant School, Rainham and The Delce Academy, Rochester to The Royal School of Military Engineering on Monday 15th July ’24. The winning pupils did a wonderful job of producing colourful posters that highlighted an important message to all regarding environmental awareness and how we can all make small changes to improve our carbon footprint.
The pupils enjoyed seeing several of our sustainability projects such as beehives, wormery and allotments and learned a lot of important facts about bees from our beekeeper – they even got the opportunity to try our very own RSME honey!
After the pupils had done a spot of gardening and sowing seeds to take home, the pupils went on to pick fresh produce from our vegetable garden which they used in their cookery lesson with our onsite chefs. We had very creative and colourful pizzas for lunch! The day was topped off by hearing the pupils say they had a great time and rated it 100/10.
Holdfast would like to thank ESS for their continued support in this ESG Initiative and look forward to working with them on other ESG initiatives later in the year!
"Holdfast receive another Gold Award for ESG project"
We are delighted to share that for the second year running Holdfast have won a Gold Award at the InfraRed ‘Creating Better Future Awards 2024’ held in London on 3rd July. This award was in recognition of the Summer Sports Camp initiative that supported 25 local vulnerable children attend free sporting activities during the summer holidays. We collected the award along with our main contractor, Babcock, who went on to support these children during the October half-term holidays. This initiative not only supported the children and their families, but has also given Holdfast and our stakeholders the opportunity to engage with our local community and make a difference. We have lots of exciting ESG initiatives taking place this year and we look forward to entering next year’s awards!
