Reaching the Summit

Whether it’s injecting a touch of glamour into the industry to encourage a better standard of apprentice, or persuading the government to cough up when it comes to funding, the efforts of SummitSkills are vital.

The training body has launched the Sector Skills Agreement (SSA) for building services engineering, and employers now have a direct route to influence strategic planning for skills and training.

In short, the agreement is a deal between employers, training providers and the government. Employers lay out their workforce and skills requirements and, in return, the government and providers agree to fund and deliver training tailored to their needs. The agreement, which is designed to ensure demand-led skills, is facilitated by SummitSkills but owned by the entire sector.

“The first, most important aim is to develop an employer-led system,” says SummitSkills chief executive Keith Marshall. “This means getting to a position where the provision and funding of training and other forms of learning are responsive to the needs of employers, rather than offering it on a menu.

“Instead of being in a position where a provider is saying to an employer, ‘Which of these courses would you like to do?’ the employer should be able to tell the provider they need a course in a specific subject area. That’s what the SSA is all about – shifting the whole thing around.”

Following lengthy research, SummitSkills has identified the skills issues and worked with employers to address them.

According to Marshall, the main issue for the agreement is evolving technologies.

“As the technology changes, people who are already skilled need additional training, but they don’t need huge whacks of it. It needs to be in bite-size chunks. The key is having the flexibility to give employers what they need, when they need it.

“We’re turning into a high-technology sector, but people don’t seem to realise it. People who are already in the workforce need to develop their skills set. If you take renewables, for example, two years ago, there was hardly an issue at all, now there’s a really big one. We’ve developed standards to go alongside that, so people can develop programmes to meet those standards.”

We’re turning into a high-technology sector, but people don’t seem to realise it. People who are already in the workforce need to develop their skills set

Keith Marshall

During the first year of the agreement, an apprentice cost-benefit analysis will be done.

From the very beginning, SummitSkills has had an argument going with the government as to the cost of apprenticeships and the contribution government makes.

“Some apprentices are paid at construction rates, some are paid at engineering rates. One of the issues here is that we don’t have a good handle on how much it costs to train an apprentice. If we knew, we’d be in a far better position to argue with the government about how much it should contribute.

“When we’ve got the figures in front of us, we’ll go back to the employers and ask them what they think the right balance is.”

Employer-led regional and national SSA implementation groups have been formed. They will meet quarterly and be accountable for the delivery of SSA solutions within various areas and throughout the nation.

“The proposed solutions are of real value to employers and are set to make significant differences that will help safeguard a prosperous sector for many years to come,” says Marshall.

“There’s a whole series of things employers can do to help. It would be useful for them to interact with us because we’re continually trying to test the water

on things. The easiest way of doing so is through our website. Once people have registered they become part of the consultation.”