As mentioned in our previous blog, it’s National Apprenticeship Week and as an employer, I’m very happy to give my thoughts on the subject of apprenticeships. We were very fortunate when choosing our apprentice as she has been a real credit to the apprenticeship system and to Building Tectonics. Personally speaking, education and educational establishments exist in a parallel universe to the one that working people inhabit, but nonetheless, education is important and if anything could bridge the gap between the two worlds then the apprenticeship scheme can be heralded as an advance towards that goal.
Our Apprentice did an IT apprenticeship and even though as a company we do have IT skills, they don’t cover the range of knowledge that is studied in an IT course. So we now have a member of the team who went through the apprenticeship scheme with an overall knowledge of what we do and how we do it using IT and also has a smattering of knowledge that has seen us through the worst calamities that IT has thrown at us to date. May long it be the case.
Having now seen how useful the apprenticeship system can be, what saddens me is that there is no apprenticeship that is really geared up for our industry yet. I find it extraordinary that this is the case, given the fact that so many people are engaged in the areas of building and architectural technology, and that skills are so woefully lacking. I’ve been talking to my professional body, CIAT, about pushing such an apprenticeship up our agenda; it seems that there is the Construction Design and Build Technician Apprenticeship but few apprenticeship providers offer this particular course because they don’t think there is enough demand to warrant it.
I believe that if the government is serious about building new houses (minus the faults recently reported in the press) on the scale that is nationally needed, we’d better start thinking about building technology and treating this subject with the importance it deserves.
Written by Tony Keller, Building Tectonics.