CITB, the Standard Setting Body (SSB) for the Asbestos Industry,awarded ACAD £116,000 to develop a VQ Assessment infrastructure to enable the Asbestos Industry to complete the VQ challenge created by the CLC decision of 2015. This 2 year agreement has involved the creation of two S/NVQ centres to facilitate Vocational Qualification achievement throughout the UK via two high profile and widely recognised Awarding Organisations, NOCN and SQA.
This CITB investment in the Asbestos Industry has allowed for the training and qualifying of many new assessors from both Licensed Contractors and commercial training providers. This expansion of assessing resources across the industry was one of the fundamental elements of ACAD’s successful bid.
Graham Warren ACAD Manager commented, “The bid wasn’t about ACAD trying to do everything directly ourselves, I recognised commercial training providers needed to be involved as we all look to work together to implement the CLC decision and work through the VQ challenge. I think this collaborative approach was one of the major factors that encouraged CITB to invest such a substantial amount into the Asbestos Industry through ACAD.”
The CITB funding will achieve a number of important outputs that are steadily being delivered as ACAD invests time and energy into this exciting new development for the Asbestos Industry. The centre accreditations and qualifying of assessors were the essential first steps, with large numbers of candidates now being registered through the VQ centres from right across the UK. Graham explained “The ACAD vision recognised by CITB was a long-term investment in the Asbestos Industry that will reap benefits for years to come.
The foundations ACAD has been putting down, including the partnering with the IATP and UKATA, who represent those commercial training providers so essential to our industry, will allow the VQ centre for the Asbestos Industry to continue to build and develop well into the future. The volume of candidates that we are starting to see coming through is almost overwhelming but the planning from ACAD coupled with the investment from CITB has been carefully designed to accommodate this growing demand.”
The remainder of 2019 will see the development and launch of the non-licensed pathway for the L2 qualification and the qualifying of even more new assessors and further investment in the quality infrastructure for VQ centres.
“We still have a lot of work ahead of us as the VQ centres for the Asbestos Industry develop and gain an ever-wider footprint throughout the various parts of the Asbestos Industry. We are eager to hear from industry colleagues who are already qualified assessors or IQAs so they can find out how they can get involved and of course anybody wanting to learn more about the exciting new development should get in touch with me directly.” Graham Warren ACAD Manager
Acronym buster: SRO’s and SSB Sector Representative Organisations (SRO) are those that represent employers within an industry. Some industries have a single SRO and some have multiple SROs. Within the Asbestos Industry ACAD is an SRO and is recognised as such by mainstream organisations including Build UK, CSCS and CITB. SRO(s) work with the Standard Setting Body (SSB) which for Asbestos is CITB.
