Swansea University is the host for the EPSRC/TSB funded Innovation and Knowledge centre, the Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings (SPECIFIC). The SPECIFIC IKC has ambitious targets to create a new billion pound industry sector built on the principle of buildings as power-stations. The core collaborative partners include leading UK research institutes (e.g. ICL and Bath Universities) and internationally leading industry groups (e.g. Tata, BASF and Pilkington). Critically, the IKC is established after 9 months of operation in a purpose designed facility including state of the art labs and scale up facilities (a pilot production line) with industry and academic team members working together in a true open innovation model. Having established the centre and the core partnerships it is clear that to deliver the ambitious targets and create the new UK lead industry in functionally coated construction products the key final ingredient is the people. Whilst the existing team funded by EPSRC, TSB, the University and Industry is quite small (19 people in totality) the IKC is supported by a larger cohort of research students (currently 32 funded largely through ESF sources). It is this critical mass of young, enthusiastic, open minded individuals that catalyses the atmosphere and initial successes of the IKC. It is the aim for COATED that we can build on this initial momentum and support three entries of seven EngD students onto a new EngD programme based entirely on functional coatings. We have secured the support of the Welsh European funding office (WEFO) and Swansea University for one third of the funds. Our industry partners have committed one third of the funds and as such we feel the proposal represents good economic value to EPSRC. This EPSRC funding will be critical in enabling research partnerships with universities outside Wales (such as ICL, Bath and Oxford) and with international companies with a UK footprint who are not based in the Principality. In addition, these research engineers upon graduation will form a critical pillar of a knowledge transfer mechanism into the new industry sector. This proposal builds on the long term innovative and successful EngD programmes run at Swansea on Steel Technology introducing a new dimension of UK wide collaboration and with a clear focus on value creation for the UK economy. COATED represents an important expansion of EngD activity at Swansea and underpins the success of the IKC. The ambitions of the SPECIFIC IKC to deliver new technology, jobs and wealth creation can only be realised with the mix of experienced Technology Transfer Fellows, engaged industry and academic partners (provided through the IKC) and a continued supply of open minded enthusiastic researchers that COATED can offer. A key new development will be the engagement with Oxford, Bath and Imperial at EngD level as this will bring cluster activity within those institutions where currently SPECIFIC has a single postdoctoral researcher. In addition, the EPSRC funding will allow for collaboration with companies across the UK and with multinational partners with a UK footprint. A key output from COATED alongside the technological and scientific innovations will be the people who will form part of the emerging new industry creating buildings that are power-stations. The alignment of Welsh Government, Industry and EPSRC that this programme offers will deliver these benefits with minimal financial contribution and could be an important model for how the funding organisations can work successfully together in the future to deliver value to the UK economy.