Ms Tierney visited South West TAFE's Sherwood Park Warrnambool campus on Thursday as part of a trip to inspect about $385,000 worth of equipment the state government provided last year.

"We know that training will be a corner stone of coming up through the economic and social recovery (from COVID-19)," she said.

"We know Warnrambool is booming in terms of residential housing, but there was also announcements for social housing last weekend ... There is lots of jobs here."

One item Ms Tierney saw was a Computer Numerical Control machine worth about $150,000 that trainees program to build materials for cabinets, reducing days of manual labour.

Student Jake O'Sullivan showed Ms Tierney a four-bedroom transportable house 12 students had built.

Mr O'Sullivan, doing a building and construction certificate, said he took the course because there were limited apprenticeships on offer but has since secured an apprenticeship with a Koroit builder.

"All the builder jobs got pulled and postponed and I came across this and thought it might be a good thing," he said.

"It's cool to learn how to build a house from nothing, doing all the flooring and frames and roofing."

Of the 12 students constructing the house, seven now have jobs in various trades or are undertaking an apprenticeship, TAFE board director Chris Holloway said.

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