At 418ft high, the Tower is unique in the UK, and one of two in Europe. Now being utilised to deliver a unique training course for Lift & Engineering Services Ltd, it gives our company a wonderful opportunity to carry out hands-on training in terms of delivering practical experience to all our staff.
Lift & Engineering Services Ltd celebrated its 30th Anniversary in 2012 and is committed to continuous improvement by always seeking new opportunities to develop the companyÂs profile, people and operations. Through this approach and in conjunction with the lift tower, we have created a new lift training programme that specialises above and beyond other training programmes that are currently available in the UK.
Currently, the route to qualification as a lift engineer is normally to take NVQ engineering qualifications to level 3 or for testing engineers, level 4. The relevant National Occupational Standard, SEMEM3-45, Inspecting and Servicing Lift Equipment, allows operatives to gain qualification based on competence and knowledge without experiencing a wide range of installation types or proving ability in a live test situation. Typically, it is not possible to make assessment of true skills on a customerÂs operational lifts or to train in teams nor gain experience on high rise high speed lifts, which is a rare opportunity. From our perspective, continuing to do what the industry typically does has become uncomfortable and we want to develop new solutions to the problems we encounter.
Our bespoke training programme is one of a number we are introducing in 2013 that breaks new ground. A parallel training programme commenced in February 2013 is in asbestos awareness training, which adds to the standard UKATA qualifications, because they do not deal with the instances in which our employees regularly encounter asbestos in lift installations  this is our own programme and not commercially available.
The finished products of the programme allow our operatives and contract managers to be made more able and skilful in the delivery of our customer and technical services, whilst operating in a safer and more structured way. This adds value to the company as well as to the individuals involved, who would be unlikely to obtain such training.
