TRAINING
Training during a pandemic
With ongoing restrictions in place for travel and meeting, training providers have had to find alternative methods of engagement. Training director Kelvin Kelly and Martin Cook, training instructor at Business Edge share their experiences.
T
he global pandemic has impacted us all greatly over the past year. Refrigeration, air conditioning technicians
and Engineers have been busy ensuring that food distribution network and the National Health Service has continued to cope with the unprecedented demands put upon them, with refrigeration and air conditioning serving and maintaining vital medicines, food production, transport, storage, critical computer systems and data centres. RACHP technicians and engineers are legally obliged to hold certain qualifications to enable them to prove competency. During the first lockdown, this proved to be problematical. Training and assessment centres were forced to close for several weeks, meaning new RACHP technicians or engineers needing an F-Gas Assessment were unable to do so. Some experienced technicians faced the possibility of their qualifications expiring, with no means of renewing. Fortunately, this problem was overcome in early June of last year. Following the initial lockdown, training
and Assessment Centres have been allowed to remain open to ensure that mandatory qualifications can be gained or maintained, thus allowing critical/key RACHP workers to meet their legal obligations.
32 February 2021
Training providers had to quickly adapt and develop new ways of presenting and assessing qualifications in a Covid-19 safe environment, whilst maintaining quality standards. At Business Edge, we overcame the Covid-19
issues by: ■ reducing the number of candidates allowed into our Centres at any one time
■ cleaning all equipment with anti-viral clean- ing fluids between every candidate training session
■ maintaining a similar time frame on courses that ran pre-Covid-19, thereby ensuring cost effectiveness and quality for our customers.
Most providers have adopted a Blended Learning approach. This includes online training in the form of webinars, which enable a greater number of persons than previously possible to undertake the theory elements within a particular course. Practical training and assessment can then be scheduled for small groups to attend our training centres, in line with Government guidance. These changes have substantially minimised contact between instructors and students. All students have the option to undertake the theory elements of the training and assessment, such as F-Gas, online. What is of paramount importance to us is that this should not reduce
the quality of the training given. We have ensured this by carrying out each webinar course 'live', meaning that the training is delivered in real time by our professional and experienced refrigeration engineers. This 'live' experience allows the candidate to ask questions directly to the trainer as they occur, thus providing a platform for full interaction, just as if they were in the training room together. Training should always involve two-way communication, allowing the trainer and trainee to discuss how the legislation impacts upon them and their role within the industry. Whilst learning via pre-recorded videos might suit some people, it does not enable trainer and trainee interaction or discussion. Our online webinars deliver the best of both worlds, providing discussion between peers and training instructors. Business Edge Ltd records all online training, allowing students to re-visit/review for revision prior to Assessment. The online approach obviously does not suit
everyone. Therefore, at Business Edge, we still allow those who wish to attend the Centre in the traditional sense to do so, but in limited numbers and in accordance with Government safety guidelines. There have been reports that the Covid-19 situation has caused a shortage of availability for candidates wishing to undertake their initial
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