IT has been six years in the planning, 18 months in construction and has cost £58 million.
But Jewel & Esk College's years of hard work have finally paid off as its two new campuses open their doors to students.
For the past 15 months, staff and students have been working out of portable buildings at the college's Midlothian campus, but
now they have moved into purpose-built accommodation on two campuses at Milton Road East and Eskbank.
Coming in at £3m over budget but on schedule, Jewel & Esk's campuses represent a significant investment in the college sector in Edinburgh and the Lothians, which has seen a total of £178m ploughed into it in the past five years alone.
Principal Howard McKenzie said the sector continued to be strong, despite the bleak economic climate, but admitted he did have concerns for the future.
He said: "We are having quite a lot of meetings and discussions with the Government about what we will do when the unemployment hits.
"The plumbing industry hasn't taken on trainees this year and that worries us, but it will be about May or June before we start to see real changes. But the college sector is very healthy.
"This is one of 18 new colleges, there are another four in construction and hundreds of millions are being pumped into the sector.
"If unemployment doubles, a lot of people will be wanting to retrain and it's going to fall on colleges to retrain them and get them into a new job."
The new Portobello campus is said to be a "landmark" in further education, offering students a real-life working environment in careers such as hospitality, health and fitness, beauty, catering and hairdressing.
It includes a spa and gym, hairdressing studio, beauty salon, recording studios and restaurant, which will not only be used as teaching facilities for students but will also be run as commercial enterprises.
It also has a new swimming pool, replacing the college's larger 25-metre facility, which sparked concern amongst community groups when plans were first unveiled.
The new campus is a million miles away from the college's previous outdated campuses, where none of the classrooms and facilities were purpose-built.
Mr McKenzie said: "Everything was a converted something.
"The beauty therapy suite was a converted kitchen, which was a converted classroom, which was converted from a mining engineer's workshop.
"The HMI was critical that what we were offering was not industry standard.
"We had 11 recommendations in our last inspection and nine of them were to do with the building.
"These new buildings are really fantastic and when the students came in, they really came alive."
Steve Hudson, project director of the e:volve development, said: "The new build has always remained focused on functionality and creating an environment which will place our students in a much stronger position for entering the workplace.
"We have also made the redevelopment a collaborative process by combining professional guidance with staff input.
"This has ensured an environment that is fit for use."
