A year after its official launch, SummitSkills, the Sector Skills Council for building services engineering, highlighted its achievements to date and aims for the coming year at a press conference in London this week.
Speaking at the conference, the chief executive, Keith Marshall, said SummitSkills’ first year in operation had been an “inspiring success”, with the organisation well thought of by government ministers and civil servants alike. Over the next year it will continue to concentrate its efforts on attaining not just tactical but strategic success for employers and the sector in general.
“We are very proud of the fact SummitSkills is the only Sector Skills Council to have representation in the Tomlinson working group and the ministerial steering group implementing the outcomes of the Apprenticeship Task Force,” Marshall said. “This underlines SummitSkills’ position at the forefront of government strategic planning of national education initiatives.”
Asked how much of a setback the government not implementing all the Tomlinson recommendations was, Marshall said: “The fact the white paper recognises apprenticeships at all is an achievement.”
Projecting future skills requirements is a key objective for SummitSkills. It is already working on an Olympic Skills project to ensure the building services skills required are in place should London win the bid. This agreement is transferable to the Thames Gateway project planned for the city. SummitSkills has also worked with awarding body EAL to ensure a new qualification, designed to meet Part P of the Building Regulations, was introduced and properly reflected electrotechnical national occupational standards.
According to Marshall, improving career progression to professional levels is also high on the SummitSkills agenda: “With the assistance of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, an occupational map to cover the entire building services engineering sector will be created. As well as establishing qualifications up to and including level 5, we will work with professional institutions and registration bodies to link schemes to occupational competence and standards.”
