It is well-known that, for more than a decade, companies and industries in the UK wood chain have found their own solutions to its training and education challenges, with little or no financial assistance from central or regional government bodies. Remarkably, the sector has experienced year-on-year growth over the same period, testimony to the determination of employers and staff to remain competitive.
No-one would claim that the achievement was easy. Now, however, things are getting better. The support of trade and professional bodies in 2004 for the recognition of UKWoodchain (UKW), a not-for-profit organisation, as the sector training and skills body, opened the way to government money to build foundations for performance improvement across the sector’s 13,000 businesses and individual industries. It is a major challenge that will call on employers and staff in the UK over the coming years.
The key ‘building blocks’ will be National Occupational Standards, definitions agreed by employers of the knowledge, skills and personal qualities that make someone competent to carry out a particular activity. Other sectors have spent years developing their definitions and embedding them in business processes and national qualifications but the wood industry was unable to because it did not have the resources or the organisation. The result is that the wood chain is almost entirely without any standards and is deprived of qualifications and programmes that attract financial support.
The most obvious example is apprenticeship. There can only be apprenticeships if there are government-recognised qualifications. but such qualifications have to be developed from National Occupational Standards. No standards mean no apprenticeships so, in recent years, employers have been forced to use schemes designed for other sectors, like construction and furniture. Sawmilling has been the only industry in the sector with its own, little-used apprenticeship programme.
Clearly, the situation requires serious attention. UKW has responded by consulting employers and in-company human resources specialists to design the kind of scheme that will equip future staff for the demands of working in the sector and will provide companies with access to work-ready young people.
A pilot will be tried in several regions from next autumn, after the scheme has been finalised with employers and funding negotiated. The current model is based on an initial two-year foundation apprenticeship with opportunities to progress to a second, two-year graduate apprenticeship linked, according to performance, to foundation degree university programmes. It is designed to attract and nurture talented people, taking them to the highest level they can achieve and rewarding them accordingly with qualifications.
Two ‘strands’ of apprenticeship, at both levels, appear likely to feature in the final scheme. People looking for a career in the commercial side of sector operations will be guided through appropriate specialisms, probably gaining early membership of a professional body like the Chartered Institute of Purchase and Supply. Those wanting to work on the production side would develop separate specialisms and link with the Institute of Wood Science and the Institute of Wood Machining Technologies. There will be a substantial amount of common learning to give the sector a strong basis of wood-related knowledge across its different functions.
The plan is entirely dependent on writing and agreeing the standards with employers and then converting them into qualifications – by next summer. Work is already under way on standards for wood transformation activities relating to composite materials, panel manufacture, lamination and engineered products while draft standards for woodmachining look likely to be published for consultation very soon. Plans have been submitted and approved to cover sawmilling in the first half of 2007 and it is hoped that timber frame and system manufacture can be completed before the pilot apprenticeship exercise begins.
Access to government funding has been essential to this work and will remain an important part of the sector’s capacity to develop performance, but UKW also relies on employers in the four countries who are willing to give their views or to allow UKW researchers to carry out observations on their sites, developing and testing draft standards. In return, qualifications and schemes like apprenticeships will develop more quickly and UKW will follow the lead given by some other sectors by publishing guidance on making the most of Standards in business processes.
The main objective is to develop and package Standards that support employers and staff in as many ways as possible. To this end, UKW’s research team has been surveying what is available in other English- speaking countries and has the approval of New Zealand and Canadian authorities to use their standards where appropriate. The offers are significant because they come from countries with advanced packages of standards and are accompanied by requests for partnership in the development of an international qualification for the sector, at technician or senior technician level in the first instance. This would add to the incentives built into the apprenticeship and foundation degree programmes.
Employers who want to influence any aspect of the standards work or the apprenticeship/degree programmes should contact UKW’s field team on research@ukwoodchain.ltd.uk or call 01938 554888.
