ON THE ROAD TRAINING
First Choice for training
Following its 2014 acquisition of engineer training specialist Combico UK, First Choice Group has expanded its services to include in-house engineering training. Charlotte Westwood visited the catering spares supplier for a first-hand insight.
G
iven that I work as a journalist and not an engineer, you’ll appreciate that my competence in all things electricity- related is next to non-existent. So, when I went along to day one of the First Choice Group Combico UK two-day Commercial Catering Equipment Electrical Competence Course, I was less than confident in my abilities to keep up. However, as training co-ordinator Simon Groucutt began the morning with a back- to-basics refresher on the fundamentals of electricity, I was pleasantly surprised to find that knowledge from the distant days of school physics lessons came flooding back, as I reacquainted myself with ohms, volts, amps and atoms for the first time in over a decade. It helped, of course, that this particular programme is not intended for qualified electricians.
Rather, it is aimed at engineers who want to learn how to operate safely and successfully when they find themselves dealing with electrical appliances in the commercial catering sector –
18 October 2018
and just how vital this knowledge is soon became apparent.
Mr Groucutt’s first question to the group was: “Who has experienced an electric shock?” While I could thankfully exclude myself here, six of the 10 attendees raised their hands, and some thought- provoking statistics followed. One in every 13 of reported electric shocks is fatal and, despite their working with electricity on a daily basis, qualified electricians make up only 50% of those fatalities. Mr Groucutt explained: “The main aim of the course is to introduce an understanding of safe working practice. Electricity is silent and it can hurt, but people rarely consider the seriousness of the implications. This course brings safety to the forefront.”
It’s delivered by Combico UK, the training division of Cannock-based First Choice Group which, with a £30m turnover, is the UK’s most significant stockist of OEM catering spare parts. The business’ City & Guilds-accredited Electrical Competence course has been running for the past 18 months and has been well-
received by industry. It is deliberately limited to 10 spaces to ensure an optimum learning experience for attendees and classes have been fully booked since their introduction. Held over two full days, the first of these is devoted to theoretical learning. It’s thorough, being divided into six overarching sections, but it’s informal and interactive, too. After a recap on Ohm’s law, out came the calculators to ensure everyone was up to speed on resistance calculations for both series and parallel circuits. Having covered the basics of electrical principles, including electron theory, voltages, AC and DC, and conductors and insulators, Mr Groucutt moved on to electrical safety, building on the theory thus far to apply it to more practical scenarios: protection against electric shock, electrical earth faults, safe isolation procedures, and the termination of conductors. Keeping the course firmly grounded in reality, he reminded the group that incorrectly terminated conductors are the most significant cause of electrical fires in installations.
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