Alick Smith
President’s Foreword
With the deepest recession in decades lingering much longer than first predicted, it’s been a difficult year and it looks like there will be more to come before we can expect good times to return.
With work hard to come by, it is no surprise that our intake of apprentices suffered accordingly with the number of new starts down by approximately half on the previous year. Nevertheless, it appears that, compared both with the situation in England and Wales and with other trades here in Scotland,we continue to train at comparatively high levels.
Training of qualified electricians in various industry disciplines at The Walled Garden continues to be strong also and a new Graduate Diploma in Management has been launched in conjunction with Napier University.
Also at The Walled Garden, there have been several significant developments. Organisational restructuring and retirals have led to new members of staff being recruited. The loss of experienced professionals is always a difficult thing to manage but, with the changes now behind us,we are in good shape to provide Members with even better service in the year ahead.
Physical changes have also been the order of the day at our headquarters in Midlothian with the completion of The Walled Garden’s new South Building. This was officially opened by former Labour Minister Rhona Brankin MSP.
The construction of this significant new 15,000 sq ft structure builds our asset base and is a ‘centre of excellence’ for Scotland’s building services industry with almost all of the key players represented on the one site.
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Its completion presented the opportunity to put newly-created space in the main building to good use and our new Scottish Environmental Technologies Training Centre will soon be delivering Scottish Qualifications Agency approved training to the electrical,plumbing and heating & ventilating industries – all compliant with the European Directive.
Perhaps the biggest advance over the past year has been Scottish Government granting the use of their Certification Mark to SELECT Certifiers of Construction. Already, many contractors are carrying the distinctive saltire on vans and letterhead thus establishing their credentials beyond doubt in the eyes of the public.
With the Conservative/LibDem government still finding their feet, we are already lobbying Scotland’s new MPs on key issues affecting our industry.
We have no illusions that managing our way out of recession is going to be anything other than difficult but with the arrival of a new political reality, there also arrives a fresh set of opportunities for our industry and we will be alert to ensure that the quality of service delivered by SELECT continues to be of the highest order.
SELECT will continue to set the standard for high quality electrical work. Alick J. Smith
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