Energy Matters | Issue 4 | 2020
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F E AT U R E www.elmhurstenergy.co.uk
In the past few months life as we know it has changed, and training is not exempt. We have seen the uncertainty of the coronavirus transform the country and our everyday lives, and, in some unfortunate cases, waistlines.
The changing face of training
Whilst things stay as they are now, we will continue with growing the number of online courses and webinars...
Mitesh Nathwani, Training Manager
I don’t think anyone had a contingency plan for a global pandemic and the best anyone could do was take the advice given by the government and make the necessary changes needed to carry on. With that in mind, on the 17th March we decided to stop all classroom based training, whether in Lutterworth or around the country. We decided from that point, with the uncertainty of everything, we needed to cancel classroom based courses on a rolling monthly basis.
Within the first week we had new short webinars available and we launched our online Retrofit Assessor course, which has proved very popular. I had decided that I wanted an online course that enabled the learner to do the course in their own time and at their own pace rather than be restricted to certain times and days. This method really worked for our members and we have received some fantastic feedback, as well as a spike in the number of assessors wanting to take up the retrofit courses.
Moving courses online
Since the success of the online Retrofit Assessor course we have also put a lot of time and effort into bringing some of our other qualification courses to the online platform. This has meant investing in new systems. We have made sure that our assessors are still able to top up their knowledge and skills as regularly as possible. We’ve introduced the following online courses: OCDEA APEL, Section 63, DEA (3 day), DEC APEL, OCDEA, NDEA APEL as well as many more.
Elmhurst was in a fortunate position whereby we were able to start producing new webinars as soon as the lockdown started and we already had a decent back catalogue, some of which we were able to offer our assessors for free. What you may not know is that although some of these webinars last approximately 30 minutes, they actually take 3 to 4 days to create.
