Salus Approved Inspectors have invested in the development of a bespoke training academy to fill what is growing gap in industry sector knowledge with the launch of the Building Control Training Academy.
“The primary reason for setting up the academy is to ensure that we have a structured and effective training programme, appropriately supplied for our own team, from trainees through to all technical staff”, explained director, Paul Meadows.
The team at Salus recognised a big issue in the profession; that there is the huge academic gap on current routes to professional membership and that it is going to run out of competent professionals. Throughout the industry, newly qualified staff are being allowed to become qualified by the professional bodies and they know very little about the wide ranging nature of the sector. Graduates could theoretically become fully qualified fairly easily, but Salus strongly believe that’s not the answer – being competent is.
Paul continued, “It is really important to stress the need to bridge the skills academic skills gap and alarming number of untrained professionals entering into our profession and the need to bolster the number of competent Building Control professionals”.
The average Salus Surveyor has around 20 years’ experience in the building control sector and are highly qualified to advise clients. The company’s building control surveyors already run CPD events and seminars for clients and industry groups such as architects on topics such as fire safety and regulation updates, so the creation of the academy is a natural step to take.
“Even experienced staff need regular quality CPD. Eventually, we hope to open up a sector leading training programme for any building control professional. Most of the old technical colleges no longer run training courses, so this gap in the market has to be filled for our industry to have a successful future. Developing our own in-house programmes means we can share our vast experience and knowledge and set the correct standards to ensure that clients continue to get the best advice and guidance possible when it comes to building control regulations”, concluded Paul.
The long term plan is for the on-line training portal to be available to fellow building control bodies to support their technical needs and the team at Salus hope to roll this out within the next two years.