County pioneers advanced training scheme

22 May 2008

The Institution of Civil Engineers has urged local authorities to follow Cambridgeshire County Council’s pioneering initiative to provide on-the-job training to ‘grow their own’ transportation engineers.

The ICE has applauded Cambridgeshire’s provision of individualised learning programmes to give two members of staff the education necessary to become either a chartered engineer or ICE incorporated.

The county was the only council to date to allow employees to ‘top up’ their educational qualifications on the job to fulfil ICE requirements, according to Gareth Jones, ICE professional development senior manager. ‘It’s not an easy way of carrying it out, but with the skills shortage we face, it’s a good way of doing it,’ said Jones.

Not many contractors or consultants were providing employees with such training either, he maintained.

Babtie and Edmund Nuttall were two exceptions. Hiring candidates with lower qualifications, and allowing them to top these up, was one solution for councils experiencing recruitment difficulties – ‘university is not for everybody, and it costs’. In a process instigated by the two employees, Cambridgeshire, developed individual learning programmes in order to meet the ICE’s requirements for educational attainment.

Cambridgeshire said the work would allow other staff to develop similar programmes. Louise Collier, Cambridgeshire’s head of network management north, west and east, said: ‘We’re hoping that by offering employees greater choice in how they progress their careers, we’ll be able to attract a larger number of people to come to work with us.’

Meanwhile, a report by the New Local Government Network last month claimed local authorities’ stagnant management structures were partly to blame for their recruitment difficulties (Surveyor, 24 April). Now, the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS) has backed the finding that councils were often failing to reward performance.

Richard Wills, CSS president said: ‘local government needs to be less hierarchical in its career structures’. He told Surveyor: ‘Local government needs to reward people who want to grow their careers professionally, perhaps through project managing larger and larger projects or programmes of services.’

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