As a member of the Scottish Plant Owners Association we hope you will be aware from our website and coverage in Project Plant and other publications that the Association in conjunction with CITB Construction Skills is undertaking a project entitled Qualifying the Workforce (QTW).

In our case this relates specifically to the workforce of our Members who are involved at all levels in the Scottish Plant Hire Industry, but also to Contractors and others who operate and hire Plant and Equipment.  We want to meet the training requirements of our members as cost effectively as possible through "collective bargaining" on the cost of delivering training for our Members based on the total number of people involved, and by sourcing any available funding for training.

The Industry has lost many skilled and well trained people as a result of the economic downturn.  Companies who survived retained their best qualified people and felt no need to spend time and money on training.  Hopefully that situation is slowly improving for most Companies and will gather pace.  If that happens there will be a shortage of skilled and qualified people.

Now is the right time for Companies to take a positive look at how they will secure and improve their workforce as they develop and seek to grow their business over the next 2-3 years.

The main objectives for the SPOA's QTW are modest and are achievable with your assistance, they can be summarised as:

1. To work with every organisation with an interest and involvement in our Industry to improve the standards of competence of plant operators, fitters and staff.  We want to extend the profile and influence of the SPOA with other organisations and the Construction Industry.
2. For SPOA and our Members to demonstrate leadership in raising the standards of competence of the people and the Companies involved in Plant Hire.

The performance of the project will be "measured" by the number of new apprenticeships our Members are prepared to create; the increase in the number of people employed who are vocationally qualified to level 2 or above; and the steps taken to achieve and promote on going, lifelong learning and development.

Better trained, more competent people are essential to any Company with ambition to grow, develop and increase profits and as the starting point for this project you are invited to take part in the attached basic survey of your Company's training needs.  Any training required will be discussed in further detail with you.

You will be contacted in the next few weeks by telephone but in the meantime please return your completed survey to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it




QTW Survey Form