Training Award

Sponsored by SummitSkills

Winner

City and County of Swansea

The local authority stood out with its Work-Related Education Programme, which places school pupils in the mechanical and engineering trades for one day a week over 12 months. More than 100 students have already completed the scheme.

The judges were equally impressed with the Construction Connection programme, which created a breakthrough in interest among girls. The number of girls taking part in the council’s Saturday morning trade school has risen from zero two years ago to 15% of the total.

The judges’ verdict was that the council had excelled in its objective of developing a training and development programme to help it to attract, recruit and retain apprentices, with particular emphasis on the mechanical and electrical trades.

Runners-up

Haden Young (highly commended)

HY has sought to fill the skills gap in the building services industry with the introduction of a foundation degree. The bespoke commercial and building services degree is the first employer-led integrated qualification of this kind in the country. In the longer term, the programme will increase the supply of quality professionals in contracting and reinvigorate the labour market.

Arup

After reviewing what was on offer externally, Arup decided that nothing adequately satisfied its specific training needs. This led to the development of an inhouse training and accreditation course to ensure that only accredited staff were empowered to undertake and review carbon calculations. In addition, a sustainable and carbon modelling distance learning package was produced. These developments in 2007 have supplemented the existing inhouse training modules.

Buro Happold

Buro Happold aims to prove wrong those people who say engineers do not make good managers. The Performance & Communication Excellence (PACE) management development programme provides individual support, training input and related activities concentrating on “doing” management well in practice, rather than teaching by traditional “chalk and talk”.

NG Bailey

The Site Supervisors Development Programme seeks to get supervisors back on the job by using MBWA – management by walking about. This is an interactive learning event which uses experimental learning to inform and embed knowledge and skills in key behavioural areas, such as communication and planning. To date, more than 200 supervisors have undertaken the first stage of training.

Sinclair Knight Merz

At the heart of SKM’s training provision is the 16 core competencies issued by the EC-UK . SKM has developed its Learning and Development Framework to encompass a number of streams appropriate for the roles within the business, including project management, technical and advisory, and client relationship management.