The timing and venue for the launch of the timber industry’s new National Vocational Qualifications could not be better.
Over 18 months in the making through a close, collaborative effort between the timber Sector Skills Council Proskills and the industry, the qualifications will be officially unveiled at the Ecobuild show next week.
The event is now undoubtedly the leading exhibition for the UK building sector. Given its core emphasis on sustainability, alongside the Timber Expo show in September, it’s also the prime opportunity for the timber industry in particular, as provider of the most sustainable, renewable material there is, to present its products, systems and services to builders, engineers, architects and other construction professionals.
But it is from the construction sector that the timber industry is also facing most pressure to back products with in-depth, knowledgeable support and expert information on specification, use, and increasingly environmental credentials – from certification, to cradle-to-grave life cycle analysis, even, possibly, the upcoming anti-illegal wood EU Timber Regulation.
The building industry itself is having to take ever more sophisticated and hi-tech approaches, and use ever more highly specified products and materials to meet ever tougher energy and environmental performance standards and regulations. Naturally enough it’s passing on those demands and pressures to its products and materials suppliers. And if the latter don’t have all the data and information at their fingertips and can’t instill confidence in the customer or specifier that they can meet their specific needs, they risk losing out.
Either the sale goes to a rival material or to a competitor in the same industry in the UK or abroad – and the overseas contingent of timber, engineered wood and timber systems suppliers at Ecobuild seems to grow show on show.
What all this calls for, says Proskills timber industry lead Helen Hewitt, is “knowledgeable, competent, well-trained people”, which the new qualifications will deliver.
The first of the NVQs are a Certificate in tooling technologies and Diplomas in both sawmilling and timber merchant supplies,
with the syllabus for the latter including sustainability and chain of custody as well as timber and panel product knowledge. Once these are rolled out, more will follow, with engineered timber and wood fuel among the next most likely areas to be covered.
Proskills and its Wood Industry Board (WIB) also now ‘aspire’ to create a new apprenticeship framework for the sector.
Ms Hewitt said this would not only give timber training added depth and structure and make the industry more attractive to new recruits, it would also help access more government training funding.
Peter Kelly, Howarth training and quality manager and chair of the WIB, expressed excitement about the NVQ launch and described the whole training initiative as “the first time the industry has worked together to achieve a fully competent workforce for the future”.
And now, say the architects of the qualifications, the obligation is on the industry. If the NVQs are not taken up sufficiently within five years, they could be withdrawn. It is, it seems, a case of use it or lose it.
