Southmead Hospital Enablement

Case Study: Carillion enable their workforce to up-skill through the NVQ/ On Site Assessment & Training (OSAT) route on Southmead Hospital Redevelopment Project

The Challenge

Carillion’s Southmead Hospital Redevelopment Project in Bristol was awarded the status of National Skills Academy for Construction at the latter part of 2010.

Marnie Buckland has since been appointed as the Project Skills Coordinator and joined the project at the beginning of May 2011

One of the priority targets of the Project is to up- skill the existing workforce so that they are quantifiably competent.

The challenge was to try and capture the operatives who were working from an experienced background that had not achieved prior occupational qualifications in their chosen trade and register on to an assessment route for a National Vocational Qualification.

With the Project in its infancy, the Individual Skills Profiles provided were low in number and the supply chain engagement required development.

Through discussions with Gary Hewison (Regional Performance Coordinator for NSAfC) Marnie Buckland (PSC) decided to try a different approach to improve performance and the engagement with the supply chain.

The Actions Taken

Posters were put up in the canteen, the induction room and security office, stating that Marnie would be available in the canteen on set dates and times to discuss any training requirements the operatives had and to explain what options were open to them to progress their skill base.

The Outcome

The canteen sessions proved to be an immediate success with the supply chain operatives. The appropriate information was collected such as; name, date of birth, CITB registration number, qualifications held and qualifications required. This information was forwarded to our OSAT training provider and their assessor attended the site to induct the operatives and start the assessments. To date, we have registered 34 operatives for their NVQs and should be completing them within 10 weeks. This has provided an excellent start to our first quarter and allowed the Project to get ahead of our initial targets.

We look to continue these successful sessions in the future to capture changes and movement within the supply chain as the project progresses.

“I have been with Byrne Brothers on and off for 14 years. Up until now I haven’t really had the opportunity to do my NVQ, but as this is a National Skills Academy for Construction Project the training seemed much more accessible. Marnie was very helpful, approachable and with her help it all went very quickly and smoothly.”

Gareth Etherington,
Byrne Brothers.

Read more about the Southmead Hospital project.