Land-based Engineering Trailblazer Standards approved for use

Land-based Engineering.  Get used to the phrase.  Within the context of apprenticeships for construction plant service and maintenance engineers it is vital that you do.

On December 16^th the Skills Funding Agency approved for use the two Trailblazer Apprenticeship Standards on which the CEA has been working in partnership with the agricultural sector’s Land-based Engineering Training & Education Committee (LETEC) for most of the past year.  This successful outcome has provided the construction equipment sector with standards that describe the job role that apprentices will undertake and the skills required of them by the Land-based Engineering (LBE) sector and are pitched at Level 2 for ‘service engineers’ and at Level 3 for ‘service engineering technicians’.  The good news extends further in that the LBE standards have been placed in the highest funding band for government funding under its new regime to commence in May 2017.

In 2015 the CEA Skills Advisory Panel identified the need to analyse the construction equipment sector’s apprenticeship training needs within the context of the (then) relatively new UK government policy of developing new sector-specific ‘Trailblazer’ apprenticeship standards.  We quickly recognised the importance of such standards with respect to service engineers as these employees are the backbone of construction plant manufacturers and their dealers and there was widespread recognition that steps much be taken to ensure they are provided w