TEES TECH AWARDS 2026

SPONSORED BY AZETS

Katharine Hawking, Nicola Loughran and Gary Potts, right, of Middlesbrough College Group, with Andrew Rowe, of category sponsor Azets.

WINNER

It employs 1,100 people – and now Middlesbrough College Group is an awardwinner thanks to its bespoke, custom-made Inspire AI tool.

Around 13,000 students study at the group each year – but it’ s a development for staff that clinched the Digital Transformation prize.

Inspire AI reduces staff workloads by streamlining lesson planning, curriculum design, marking and resource planning.

And in little over a year, it’ s already proved its worth, with regular users reporting an average time saving of 3.5 hours a week – freeing capacity for learner support, curriculum development and meaningful professional collaboration.

Little wonder, then, that the college’ s deputy principal / CEO for skills and partnerships, Gary Potts, sang the system’ s praises after he picked up the award from Andrew Rowe of category sponsor Azets.

Gary said:“ As an employer of about 1,100 people, we have to make sure we are managing staff workload and that our systems are lean and smart.

“ As part of our digital transformation journey, we’ ve looked to make sure we harness the power of AI to help our teachers and Inspire AI is the result.

“ It’ s a tool that enables our tutors to take marked work from students that they’ ve done through the year, put it through Inspire AI and that will help them mark it and give feedback to students really quickly, meaning they can spend more time on the ground with the students.

“ Basically, all that‘ sitting at the desk, marking’ can be done a lot quicker through Inspire AI.”

Rather than buying an off-the-shelf product, Middlesbrough College Group has built Inspire AI to ensure it aligns with teaching and learning priorities.

The project began in March 2025, with a functional version released to staff last July. The tool is now embedded at scale, with around 175 teachers using Inspire AI each month and approximately 1,000 queries generated.

As part of its development, staff“ blind marked” pieces of work and ran them through Inspire AI to ensure accuracy – with reassuring results.

Gary said:“ It’ s gone down really well – it’ s been really positive for our staff body and the feedback’ s been amazing.

“ And it’ s a tool that’ s being built on bit by bit. We’ re carrying on developing it and adding new features all the time.”

SPONSOR’ S MESSAGE

Andrew Rowe, office managing partner at Azets, said:“ Azets’ sponsorship of the Digital Transformation Award aligns with our commitment to helping businesses across all industries to use technology to revolutionise the way they work.

“ From automation and data analytics to AI and cloud accounting, we assist with helping any type of business to leverage tech to propel their business growth in today’ s digital age.”

FINALISTS

CF FERTILISERS UK

Since 2023, Teesside-based CF Fertilisers – the UK’ s leading manufacturer of nitrogen fertilisers – has replaced legacy systems with secure, cloud-based platforms, modernising people processes, enterprise systems, analytics, maintenance planning and customer engagement.

Investment in cyber resilience, including a Purdue Model architecture, has strengthened protection of critical manufacturing assets, while modern tools such as Oracle, SAP, Workday, Tableau and iPlan have improved visibility, efficiency and decision-making.

This phased approach has strengthened operational resilience, supported customers through improved reliability and service, and future-proofed a vital UK manufacturing site in challenging economic times.

SEALIP ENGINEERING

Sealip, with an office in Stokesley, is an offshore engineering consultancy that has embedded automation into its core processes.

Through investment in specialist automation engineers, it has developed bespoke tools to enhance modelling capability, improve efficiency and enable more advanced analysis of subsea cable systems.

These innovations include automated resistance modelling, advanced fatigue visualisation and enhanced environmental loading simulations, allowing Sealip to deliver deeper insight and greater accuracy for clients.

This transformation has strengthened Sealip’ s competitive position, supported job creation and expanded its service offering, providing customers with improved risk identification and more detailed analysis.

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