Data comes of age

The Electrical Contractors' Association (ECA) has recently been instrumental in developing a structure for the datacomms sector, which includes the development of standards, training, vocational qualifications and the recognition of operatives by ECS card registration.

The ECA has long had concerns about the datacomms industry and what could be done to help ECA member companies achieve their full potential. To many, it seemed that the initiatives introduced to help eradicate cowboys from other parts of the construction industry had not yet reached the datacomms sector. This was resulting in the industry developing a bad name, causing clients to be nervous about investing in new technology business solutions.

The ECA ITEC Committee developed a paper detailing what would be necessary to bring the datacomms industry into line with other disciplines within construction. The paper outlined all the parameters that would have to be met:

• operative classification;
  
• educational requirements;
  
• NVQs;
  
• operative registration;
  
• health and safety training;
  
• professional recognition;
  
• company accreditation.

Subsequently the full might and resources of the Association came together to help launch the ECA Datacomms Project.

ITEC developed the following job descriptions for datacomms operatives:

• Datacomms Engineer;
  
• Datacomms Technician;
  
• Advanced Datacomms Specialist;
  
• Datacomms Specialist;
  
• Datacomms Specialist Trainee.

National Electrotechnical Training (NET) was asked to develop a range of national occupational standards to support the new job descriptions and the new CENELEC European datacomms standards: BS EN 50173; BS EN 50174 Parts 1 to 3; BS EN 50310 and BS EN 50346. In addition, the new occupational standards were to ensure compliance with British law and European Directives.

At this stage, NET has completed the main occupational standards, which have been given to City & Guilds to develop into NVQs. It is expected that the NVQs will be made available for the next academic intake in September 2004.

It is expected that the datacomms NVQs will be made available for the next academic intake in September 2004

The JIB has completed a pilot project and the first batch of datacomms operatives have been issued with their ECS cards, which include the first ever ECS registered Datacomms Engineer.

Meanwhile, the ECA's technical department has developed a datacomms assessment procedure, which ITEC has aligned with the European Telecommunication Services Association (ETSA) quality assessment procedure, Qualif'Com. This means that ECA members that have been assessed in ECA Datacomms category D2 or D3, automatically qualify for ETSA's Qualif'Com registration (subject to a registration fee).

Some time ago, the ITEC committee looked at what was available in the datacomms industry and decided to advise ECA members to follow the BICSI route as, at that time, there were few other options available in the UK to support the modern datacomms industry. In turn, ITEC has worked with BICSI to help BICSI 'fit into' the new datacomms industry being formed in the UK and Europe.

BICSI has developed a European addendum for its Technician level qualification and had it assessed as being worth two modules at NVQ Level 3. This means that any operatives holding a BICSI Technician certificate only need to gain another four NVQ Level 3 modules to register as an ECS Advanced Datacomms Specialist and, with further training, make ECS Datacomms Technician status.

The ECA's work with the Datacomms Project has moved into its final stages with its marketing team playing a key role in ensuring that the project reaches its full potential.