Pat Allen, Chairman of the Fire & Security Association (FSA), discusses the need for a fire and security apprenticeship.
In my time as a fire and security engineer I have always hoped that one day our sector would be widely recognised in its own right.
I can’t help but wonder what’s holding us back, and I suspect that one area which I think lets us down is that we lack a recognised apprenticeship. We have no universally recognised apprenticeship route and are reliant on retraining electricians or carrying out in-house training to ensure we have a continuous supply of people who can fill the gaps in key roles within our industry.
This may work at present, but it’s a very short-sighted and somewhat risky approach. It means we have no agreed industry standard for apprentices and it makes us dependent on the success of other industries’ apprenticeship and adult vocational progammes to fill vacancies for key roles in ours. In doing this, we’re at risk of losing out if apprentice numbers in these other sectors drop off. And one has to wonder if this is already happening in the electrotechnical industry, which is now dealing with its own challenges following a difficult recession and a change in the training landscape. As a result, the potential pool of talent available for our sector has shrunk and we’re starting to have gaps at entry level.
The best solution to this issue that I can see is for us to look at developing our own apprenticeship, and the Trailblazer projects – one of the Government’s flagship apprenticeship projects – could be crucial to helping us achieve this. The Trailblazer apprenticeships are designed to aid the development of industry and employer-led apprenticeships, a concept could work very well for our industry as the current apprenticeship offered for security and electronic systems doesn’t have the support of a large number of businesses.
Replacing this offering with a Trailblazer apprenticeship would mean we’d be able to develop something that was created by the industry and the employers within it. It may seem like a big step, but there is a lot in terms of core competencies that can be taken from the existing electrotechnical apprenticeship. These core competencies could be built upon with an option to specialise in fire and emergency or security systems core areas, depending on which area the apprentice’s employer specialises in, with onsite learning objectives, practical and theory assessments based around the needs of fire and security businesses. Work is currently underway to achieve this, backed by the key industry players, and highly effective collaboration and support from the FSA and Summitskills.
A draft standard has been developed by a group of employers and other stakeholders from our industry and is en route to BIS for review. If accepted, I would hope it would achieve the buy-in from companies in the industry that our current apprenticeship failed to, and would provide us with a structured, accepted and approved means of bringing people into the industry at entry level – something which would strengthen our claims that we are a specialist subset of a high-skilled industry.
To view the draft standard for the Fire, Emergency and Security Systems Apprenticeship visit: http://www.fireandsecurityassociation.co.uk/News.aspx?id=1001760
Pictured: Apprentices at the IFSEC challenge in May 2013.
