TfL aiming to bridge the skills gap

15 November 2007

Transport for London is hoping to encourage more people into bridge maintenance by creating the first nationally-recognised qualification for highways structure inspectors.

Stephen Pottle, TfL’s structures manager, is currently waiting to get accreditation for the national vocational qualification (NVQ), which he hopes will standardise the bridge inspection process and give more status to the role.

‘This NVQ will be a formal qualification so that we have a measurement of competence allowing bridge owners to have confidence in inspections,’ said Pottle. ‘There is an issue because, even though we have the codes of practice, these can be interpreted in different ways by different people – giving different results.’

The NVQ was announced by TfL’s head of network management, Dana Skelley, at Surveyor’s Bridge Maintenance conference last week. ‘We need to get rid of the idea that bridge inspection is a dead end job, and with this NVQ we hope to give status to the position and let people know that it is a good career move,’ she said.

TfL thinks the qualification will lead to better staff retention throughout the industry, and says that, once obtained, it could be applied to a number of different types of bridges including those for railways. ‘Once in place, inspectors and contractors from around the country will be able to show a formal qualification to bridge managers, who can be assured that the people they are using have been trained to a certain level,’ added Pottle.

‘TfL has more than 1,800 kinds of highways structures including culverts and tunnels, which are all inspected regularly and it’s important to us to get the inspections standardised so we always know what we’re dealing with.’

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TfL aiming to bridge the skills gap

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