Condition monitoring may fail to meet the requirements…

Three years ago, I was approached as Project Manager, Apprenticeships, to ascertain whether BINDT could develop a condition monitoring (CM) apprenticeship. After some debate by the Education & Professional Development Committee, we decided to support the initiative and Cindy Bailey, Membership & Registration Manager, BINDT, started the process by creating a Doodle poll to determine what level of support we would have and who would be prepared to sit on the Employer Group. The Doodle poll was sent to all of the Corporate members, the CM Technical Committee and anyone else we thought had an interest in CM. The response was extremely disappointing, so much so that we did not feel like we could meet the government’s ‘expression of interest’ requirements and, as a consequence, the project was  dropped.

In October 2018, BINDT was once again approached by a very enthusiastic CM company (and later a number of others from the CM Technical Committee), asking us to explore whether we could develop a CM apprenticeship. The rules for submitting an ‘expression of interest’ have changed and I had to do quite a lot of work to determine that no one else had created an apprenticeship that included CM or one that could accommodate CM. After several interactions with the government and having to contact three separate Employer Groups to rule out their involvement in CM, we got the green light from the Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA). Over the past few months, we have created a list of prospective employers that were recommended by others in condition monitoring and in April we sent out a wide-ranging email to the CM community, including the 26 named employers, with a closing date of 10 May 2019, asking for employers to volunteer to be part of the Employer Development Group. The disappointing outcome is that we had only three responses. We later sent out a strongly worded reminder, resulting in a further three responses. So, we now have six enthusiasts; however, we need 20. If this does not improve in the next few weeks, we will lose the opportunity and we will not get it  back.

Support it or lose it.

On a brighter note, the number of applications for the MSc Advanced Industrial Practice (NDT) has increased. Do not miss out on this opportunity; contact one of the following people:

Roger Lyon CEng HonFInstNDT, BINDT, Midsummer House, Riverside Way, Bedford Road, Northampton NN1 5NX. Tel: +44 (0)7780 498060; Email: roger.lyon@bindt.org

Nigel P Freestone BSc MPhil PhD FHEA, Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology, The University of Northampton. Tel: +44 (0)1604 893358; Email: nigel.freestone@northampton.ac.uk

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