Equans team offer professional guidance for University courses

Experienced Equans staff provided their guidance regarding the content of new construction related courses offered by the University of Bedfordshire following a meeting with University Tutor, Dr James Bishop in January.

As part of Equans' responsible business commitments, Site Manager, Joshua Peach, has been working closely with the University of Bedfordshire to support their planned courses for students looking to get into the construction industry.

As part of this, Josh and a number of colleagues from Equans provided guidance and offered their professional opinion on the content of three new construction related courses planning to be delivered to students in the new academic year.

The new courses look at the commercial, design and site management side of construction and are set at level 4, the same as a foundation degree and each course will have a duration of one year.

Having oversight of the planned courses, University Tutor, James, wanted to get people from within the construction industry to review the content of the proposed new courses and provide their input on potential areas of concern/improvements and areas they believed to be good as well as whether or not they believed candidates from this course would be more likely to find employment within the industry rather than a generic school leaver.

Equans staff members, Fred Thompson, Senior Design Coordinator and Adam Kelly, Quantity Surveyor, joined Joshua to meet James to provide their input and guidance, sharing their first-hand experiences and knowledge.

Providing guidance on the Construction Design and Build Technician course, Fred gave his insight from having several years prior experience as a qualified architect before moving to Equans. He reviewed the course structure and gave his thoughts on areas he deemed important, such as dealing with various stakeholders and the need for potential candidates to have an understanding of systems such as 4projects in order to monitor and maintain the design process through to construction. After discussions with James, Fred also stated that anyone undertaking this qualification would be in a much better position to seek employment within the design side of construction when compared to someone who had simply finished their time at school.

Adam has been working for Equans for more than five years and recently completed his degree in quantity surveying which put him in an ideal position to provide some guidance regarding the Construction Quantity Surveying course being offered by the University.

Adam reviewed the course and said the topics covered gave a great overall picture of the day-to-day workings of a Quantity Surveyor. His only real concern with the course was the time-scale, due to it being only a year long course, there was a vast amount of important information to be covered and he was concerned regarding the depth each area would go into. However, through further discussions with James it was understood as this only a level 4 course, that the purpose is to give candidates an insight into the working methods of a Quantity Surveyor and if successful they would more than likely move up to completing a full degree.

Adam stated that the course covered a lot of the key areas and someone undertaking the course would be in a better place to seek employment. He also said that the course was great as it focussed solely on main contractors such as Equans but also had areas that would be cruel for a Quantity Surveyor working for a subcontractor.

Recently achieving his own degree from the same University, Joshua was more than qualified to offer his opinion on the content of the Construction Site Supervisor course. As he had already done a foundation degree at the University Josh understood a lot of the subjects being covered as well as the importance of them to his day-to-day workings as a Site Manager. The course covered a lot of the responsibilities of a Site Manager. He raised the need for the new breed of Site Managers to be able and willing to use systems such as FieldView for quality assurance and health and safety purposes.

"The new generation need to be fluid in paperless construction as this is where the industry is moving and new starters need to be capable in the use of online monitoring systems. They also need to be capable of sorting solutions for the foreign labour workforce, especially those working in and around London.

"People seeking employment after having undertaken this course would be in a much better position to be successful when compared to someone with little to no understanding of the industry." Equans Site Manager, Joshua Peach

Josh explained how on his Glengall Road scheme in Peckham, he has a designated translator system, which implements a rule that if there are more than five people from one nation there must be a designated translator in place on site - this is done for a variety of reasons, issues on site, at home or more generally. The translator can then pass this message across to the site team for actioning as necessary