NEET Thinking from Gallagher Group – CITB & Flannery.
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The Kent Skills Hub has officially opened to offer training and upskilling opportunities. Based at Gallagher Group’s Hermitage Quarry the training facility is the result of £425,000 of funding from the CITB. Courses will be delivered by Flannery which has a growing network of skills hubs across the UK.
Sean Connor, managing director of Gallagher Aggregates said, “We have a long-term issue that it’s harder and harder to attract young people into our industry because it’s not the type of work they think they want to do. But it’s the cutting edge of technology now with machines and plant equipment, it’s so far advanced that it’s a different world than it was 20 years ago.”
The new centre is hoping to help address the more than one million young people in the UK that are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Research from the CITB found that the construction industry needs around 48,000 additional workers every year between now and 2029 to fill the skills gap.
Following successes with its skills hubs in other locations, Flannery is confident the new location will attract a diverse workforce. Aaron Davis, safety and skills director at Flannery said, “Over the last couple of years we’ve trained 2500 people through skills bootcamps in plant operations. Just over 100 ex-offenders have come through the programme and gained successful employment outcomes as well as more than 100 veterans.”
Around 28% of Flannery’s trainees so far have been NEETs, 11% were female and 14% identified as having a disability. At the Kent Skills Hub and other locations, Flannery’s next focus is to promote pathways for people who are living in or have lived in care.
Speakers at the opening event stressed that the hub is for the benefit of the wider industry including the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) project. The centre will deliver CITB site safety plus courses, NOCN assured courses, various CPCS and NPORS categories of plant operation and adjacent transport and logistics training. Collaboration with local schools, prisons, ex-services charities and the community will create a pipeline for new entrants into the industry.
Opportunities that Lead to Outcomes.
Aaron Davis continued, “Of the people we’ve had through our programme, 85% of them have not ended up working for Flannery. This is not just about feeding Gallagher, Flannery and other supply chain partners. We’re not just training people for training’s sake…
“We want these opportunities to lead to outcomes, so trainees are going back to an employer to add value, getting an uplift in wages or we’re welcoming a new entrant into the industry. We want to see thousands of people coming through here over the next 10 to 20 years. This is a legacy for skills for Kent and the South East.”
The facilities
The skills hub classroom is located at the heart of Hermitage Quarry. Connor said, “Most training takes place at the back of an industrial estate somewhere. Here, the students will be in a nursery right in the middle of the quarry where they can see all the activity around them. They can see the career they might have driving the bigger machines and dumpers and so on.
“We think it’s quite inspiring for them to be working in this vicinity but it’s also about legacy. LTC taught us about legacy and what they want to leave behind but it’s also the Gallagher family legacy. For 53 years in construction in Kent and 36 years in the quarrying business, we always try to leave a legacy.”
Trainees benefit from two simulators to experience machine operation in a risk-free environment before venturing outside to apply those skills on real equipment. The Kent Skills Hub also features a mobile training centre which will visit local companies to provide on-site training.
Charging Hub
Next to the skills hub, Gallagher has opened three new 200kW fast chargers, primarily designed for e-HGVs. The company is currently trialling two electric trucks as it decides how it will begin to electrify its fleet moving forward. The chargers use 100% renewable energy thanks to Gallagher’s investment in green energy at the quarry around four years ago.
As well as providing charging for its own truck fleet in the future, Gallagher plans to offer access to supply chain partners. The chargers are also a key piece of infrastructure for the decarbonisation of the company’s plant equipment. It’s trialling an electric LiuGong loading shovel and all its plant equipment for the training centre is electric.
Given Hermitage Quarry’s proximity to the LTC project, the chargers will be used to top up a siteCharge battery storage system that can be transported to the site. To work around issues with getting enough grid capacity on site to charge electric machinery, this novel solution will allow plant equipment to run on renewable energy without the logistical hassle of moving plant off site to find chargers.
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