Building services engineering is coming of age after years of work to bring together the four industries which make up the sector, with SummitSkills recently celebrating the successful completion of important milestone projects.
SummitSkills says its work to ensure training, funding and qualifications align with the needs of the sector is paying off, creating the conditions which will allow businesses across the electrotechnical, heating and ventilating, refrigeration and air conditioning, and plumbing industries access to the skills they need.
The sector skills council recently announced two big steps forward for qualifications and apprenticeships in the BSE sector, unifying the standard of training across the different industries, with the completion of a new Qualifications and Credit Framework and a set of Skills Funding Agency-funded integrated Apprenticeship Frameworks for England.
As interest in environmental technologies has increased in recent years, SummitSkills has responded to employers' changing skills requirements. Its new set of Apprenticeship Frameworks now include environmental technologies, providing clarity on the skills required by employers to help the sector fulfil its potential to drive the UK towards achieving its challenging carbon emissions reduction targets.
Keith Marshall, OBE, chief executive of SummitSkills says: "We have worked over the past few years to bring a level of standardisation across the industry and I am pleased to see this finally coming together. Without the right skills in the right levels across all the industries in the building services engineering sector, the UK stands less of a chance of meeting its green targets.
"With the public and government looking to tradesmen to progress the installation and maintenance of new technology, the sector has needed a single point of information to bring together widely recognised standards. As this demand continues to rise, SummitSkills will carry on working with employers to guide businesses, advise new learners and apprentices and work with government to support future development."
SummitSkills will be publishing its impact review later this year outlining its work over the past three years, what the sector can expect next and the plans for future developments.