CECA Wales Monday Briefing 6th June 2022
20 Jun 2022
CECA Wales Monday Briefing 6th June 2022
Informing the skills agenda – the importance of views from the “coalface”
Well, what a Sunday! Wales have finally made it to another footballing World Cup after 64 years of trying! And what an exciting “end to end” game. A shame for Ukraine, especially given how difficult things are back home for them, but I’m sure one of the “larger” footballing nations from around the globe will gladly give up their place for them? What a grand gesture that would be!
Anyway, onto more mundane stuff. This week the focus is on skills and a request for your input to two separate surveys. I know, no one wants to complete surveys but without an input from the “coalface” the risk of poor decision making is high!
The first relates to Plant Operations. On behalf of the Welsh Government, CITB is undertaking a fourteen-day public consultation on the implementation of a Construction Apprenticeship Framework Pathway at CQFW Level 3 for Wales and are inviting feedback on the revised draft of the Plant Operations Framework. They are seeking views from apprentices,
employers, training providers, awarding bodies, assessors and other stakeholders in Wales to ensure this revised Framework Pathway is fit for purpose. This consultation document includes a few key questions so it would be great to get your reasons alongside your answers where possible. The survey should take no longer than 15 minutes to complete and here are the links
to both Welsh and English language versions of the survey :
Welsh language : https://citb.citizenspace.com/...
English language : https://citb.citizenspace.com/...
The closing date is 14th June 2022.
The second is relevant to businesses in southeast Wales (although I suspect similar views will be sought from businesses in the north, mid and southwest of Wales in due course).
The Cardiff Capital Region Skills Partnership (CCRSP) is one of four skills partnerships in Wales. Their role is to understand the key skills priorities that face industries across the region and to plan for the future. The information they gather through engagement with stakeholders in the region and through surveys help inform their Employment and Skills Plan. Since launching
the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) Employment and Skills Plan 2019-22 in 2019 there has been a huge change in the way people work and the types of jobs on offer. However, more importantly there has been a significant change in the skills now required by industry to drive forward their businesses in a post pandemic world. The turbulent times over the last two years has meant
that many new skills have been identified as a key requirement for businesses. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we ensure that people gain the right skills in our colleges, universities and through our work based learning provision
(apprenticeships). Whilst the construction sector was a priority sector for the first plan there is no guarantee it will retain that status which is why it is important that businesses make their feelings known and why this survey is being undertaken. By completing the survey, you will be contributing to the CCR Employment and Skills Plan for 2022-2025. You will be helping to
inform the Welsh Government of the skills and training required across southeast Wales and where their funding needs to be allocated in order to fulfil these demands.
The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete but it could make a huge difference to the skills landscape across southeast Wales, particularly for the construction industry. It can be completed anonymously :
https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/...
I know there are a million things to do on a Monday morning but contributing to one or both of these surveys will be an investment in addressing the longer term skills challenges that our sector continues to face.
CECA Wales Political Update
Given the bank holiday “lull” there is no political update this week.
CECA Wales Director Activities
My activities over the last, short week included :
• Meeting the SEWales Regional Skills Partnership to discuss how the construction sector can be better supported
• Scoping out the CECA Wales joint post-conference report on “Delivering better value"
• Preparing proposals to support rolling out the new Qualifications Wales Groundworker apprenticeship with City and Guilds ahead of launch in September
• Meeting members to discuss business development opportunities
Client engagement and business opportunities
Our Joint Annual Conference was held 20th May with our partners at the County Surveyors Society (CSS) Cymru and ACE. We
were joined by a number of public and private sector clients. More about this when we publish our post conference report
later in the summer.
The SEWales Civil Engineering Framework management team and clients hosted a risk management session last week for existing framework contractors.
Training Events
Please note that our events programme for 2022 is underway and will be constantly refreshed throughout the year. Here’s the
link https://www.ceca.co.uk/wales/e... .
Our series of NEC4 workshops for members is also underway with further dates for the 2022 programme available via the link above. Due to higher demand for these courses we have arranged additional dates for June 6th, 10th, and 13th. Please be assured that we will ensure that CECA Wales members are able to access these courses albeit over a phased programme.
We will review demand for further programmes of NEC4 workshops once the current programme is complete and will announce the programme for 2023 in due course.
We are also assessing the need for membership training in Carbon Management and will announce proposals in the near future.
