Case Study: Howard Construction (Anglia) Ltd
News
14th May 2009
Howard Construction (Anglia) Ltd is a family business based in East Anglia, offering a complete building service, including civil engineering, groundworks and house building. The company directly employs over 50 people, along with a large base of sub contractors and turnover is approaching £10 million per year.
The company firmly believes in training and is working towards CSCS and CPCS compliance by ensuring that their workforce is NVQ qualified.
“We do a large amount of work for the major house building group – Taylor Wimpey, Bovis, Bellway and Persimmons for example,” says Health and Safety Manager, Mark Chenery.
“Originally, we started an NVQ training programme through a local college. Initially our workers were signed up, but then after six months had passed, nothing else had happened. What was frustrating is that we had expected to be fully carded by the middle of 2008 – but the college had done nothing! It was at then that Pieter Eksteen from Construction Learning World contacted us. As you can imagine, we were up against deadlines set by the major builders in terms of getting our workers CSCS compliant. We needed to get moving with the NVQs and thankfully, Pieter and CLW were able to help.”
"CLW profilers came out to sign-up our workers and, once the paperwork had gone through, CLW assessors were on site, working to build the NVQ portfolios.”
“The way that CLW undertook the process meant that there was minimum disruption to our work – we just can’t afford to have people off site for hours at a time. CLW worked on site, around our work, meaning that no time was lost. The process worked really well.”
“We started with 20 guys and all went through their NVQs just fine. We then rolled out the programme to include CPCS cards for our plant workers.”
“The benefit that CLW offers is that they are able to access funding for second Level 2 NVQs – perfect for our operation, especially our groundworkers who also operate ride-on-rollers, mini excavators and dumpers.”
“At first the guys were worried that they would have to sit in classrooms, but all their concerns were put to rest during the profiling sessions where it was explained that there wouldn’t be any classrooms! When the assessors began turning up on site and our guys saw exactly what was required, they were all very happy.”
“It makes a change to have assessors come out to site who have actually worked in construction. The level of respect from our guys was so much higher and they were more prepared to listen.”
“We’ve had no problems whatsoever. Any issues, we just call CLW and it gets sorted, whether its grants, levy, whatever. I can call Pieter anytime and he always gets back to me."
“My key recommendation is that CLW works with us, around our operation, rather than against the needs of the business - very flexible.”
Link: http://www.constructionlearningworld.com/news/2009/05/14/case-study-howard-construction-anglia-ltd/
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