Training update

20 TRAINING

www.elmhurstenergy.co.uk

By Mitesh Nathwani, Training Manager

This year has been the busiest year in our history within the training department. Although Covid now seems to be old hat, and almost vanished from the news, it has left a huge impact on the industry and inadvertently helped the energy sector grow to unexpected levels.

One of the biggest changes has been lower interest rates (until recently), along with the government’s approach to stamp duty breaks and stamp duty holidays. This allowed the building industry to open up before any other and demonstrated confidence in the property and energy sectors. It also enabled people to buy new and second houses, move home and, for some, extend or have work carried out on their current properties.

Each of these circumstances required an Energy Performance Certificate and in some cases a Retrofit Assessment. The knock on effect has led to an increased demand in assessors across all strands and we have been fortunate enough to be able to meet those demands. New online systems

With the growth of each strand, we have come to a point where we have introduced new systems to meet the demand; our new website now incorporates our online sales portal which was a completely different system before October.

This makes the buying of our pre-recorded webinars a much easier and faster process. Whereas, in the past we would have to manually generate a log-in, our new system does all of this automatically, so buying a course on Friday night or Saturday and having to wait until Monday is now a thing of the past. Log-in details are sent straight away once payment is confirmed. This has taken a load off the team and enabled us to have a much better, streamlined process.

The introduction of the new website has also allowed us to offer a huge 50% off our prerecorded webinars, giving assessors the opportunity to learn something new or top up their knowledge in certain areas. It will also help those who need to meet minimum requirements for CPD to get their required hours. I am planning something similar this year, so please keep an eye out for our email communications and keep checking the website!

New courses

We are also working on more courses, with the plan to have at least another 15 new courses ready by February across all strands. Recently we launched the ‘Energy Consultancy for DEAs’ course as well as the ‘Retrofit Assessor Practical day’, which have both done extremely well and have led to more dates being put into the calendar. We have also introduced practical days for assessors to attend where they can get hands-on experience going around a property, carrying out observed EPCs. This is something we have done for a number of years on the non-domestic strand and have since arranged for other strands.

Offering the best of what both companies can offer

I’m sure you now know, that our merger with Stroma is happening. This means there are many new things in the pipeline which will benefit all our assessors old and new. We are currently looking at the best of what both companies can offer and in time we will be bringing more courses your way. We also plan to update the way we do things internally, thus providing an improved service from start to finish. There are many things we plan to put in place to ensure we stay the number one choice for Energy Training in the UK.

Overall, the year has been busier than we had ever expected and we have changed many aspects of our systems to ensure we meet the high demand.

Following the merger with Stroma, our systems and offerings will only get better. I personally am expecting an even better year for our assessors in terms of work, the ability to learn as well as earn.

Please keep any eye out for our next roadshow. We were up in Scotland in September and are looking at the next one around March in the south of England.