In July 2009, the National Quality Council endorsed Australia?s first rationalised Training Package for the resources and infrastructure industry (RII09). The process of consolidating the training packages of five sectors into one required extensive consultation by SkillsDMC with all industry and vocational education training (VET) stakeholders, including enterprise, regulators and training providers. The process took three years and an estimated $2 million in industry investment.
The package was developed by SkillsDMC to increase the portability and recognition of skills across the five sectors of the resources and infrastructure industry, which includes coal mining, metalliferous mining, quarrying, drilling and civil infrastructure.
The consolidation of these five sector training packages into one has created a new national competency recognition system. Des Caulfield, the CEO of SkillsDMC, said that the national competency recognition system would enable employers to more easily identify a candidate?s industry skills and qualifications that are relevant to their operations. It would also assist VET providers, employees in the industry and new entrants to the industry.
?The enterprise is given a person who hasbeen trained in what they want and can be extended to their own operation,? Des Caulfield explained. ?Therefore, the enterprise can also rely on the credentials and qualifications to employ new people from across the industry. The creation of one rationalised package also enables the VET system to develop materials based on fewer units of competency and less qualifications. The materials that they develop can cover a much wider range, in which case a person who is being trained is receiving broader training in respect of qualification.?
The key issue under the old education and training regime was that employees? qualifications were only recognised within one industry sector, whether that be for quarrying, mining or the like. Now, rather than obtaining a quarrying-specific or mining-specific qualification, an employee will have a resource and infrastructure industry qualification that is potentially applicable across the different sectors of the industry.
?From the individual employee?s perspective, it gets them a credentialled qualification that is recognised across all five sectors,? Des Caulfield elaborated.
The competencies are recognised for the first time from industry sector to industry sector. While there are still some specialist qualifications or credentials within the training practices that relate specifically to quarrying or infrastructure, overall there is a lot more mobility between them.
?New entrants to the sector will also earn a credentialled qualification that gives them access to all five sectors,? Des added, ?and enable them to move from either one sector or another, working within a given sector and ensuring whatever future training and development they have will add to their credentials.?
A ?TRAIN AND NEED? SYSTEM
SkillsDMC, in consultation with government agencies and industry groups, reviewed over 1200 competencies and 106 qualifications spanning the five sectors. The analysis identified skills that were common to all five sectors and those specific to a particular sector. The units of competency were reduced by 25 per cent (to around 300) and the number of qualifications by 43 per cent (to around 45). This has eliminated the duplication of competencies within the sectors and, in turn, the need for expensive and unnecessary retraining by employers.
?Each of the qualifications is based on an occupational area within the industry and it is up to an enterprise to decide what it requires in order to satisfy its business needs,? Des Caulfield said. ?Every qualification depends on what the person is coming in with. For instance, if the person is coming in with a tertiary qualification and wants to be a quarry engineer or a quarry manager, then the units of competency required will directly relate to that job.?
The rationalised training system offers workersthe potential for greater mobility across the resources and infrastructure sector. Des said it was plausible, for example, for a mobile plant operator at a small gold mine in Western Australia to make the transition to work as a mobile plant operator in a quarry in South Australia. However, while the mobile plant operator is suited to operating heavy machinery, he or she may still have to satisfy certain units of competency in order to make the transition.
?The quarry may be looking for somebody who has experience in mobile plants or some crushing,? Des hypothesised. ?The mobile plant operator says, ?I have been working at a mine site and I have experience in operating heavy plant and equipment.? The quarry asks, ?Do you know that we also sell to the public? And that we have a payment system for selling to the public??
?The operator won?t necessarily have those units of competency from working at the mine site, even though he will have significant experience in smelting. What the quarry will say to him is, ?Look, we don?t do smelting, so those units of competency aren?t applicable to this role. We will need to train you in two to three units of competency relating to processes and procedures.?
?So this is how it is good for the enterprise, that they can recognise a person?s qualification, identify those units of competency that the person has within that qualification, set aside those units of competency that the person has that they won?t use, and identify those units of competency that they don?t have that are critical to the job at hand.
?It is basically a train and need operation. Instead of having to train the person in everything required for the job, there is instead some upgrading on those things they actually do, for example, the processes and procedures for the plant operation. So that is how the system works, and that is a real value to the enterprise.
?The whole system is based on the needs of industry and when people talk about qualification, from my point of view, I actually think of work organisation. Work organisation demands that a series of units of competency follow into an area that is the job. It is really a job chasing a qualification, not a qualification chasing a job.?
ROLL OUT AND RESOURCES
SkillsDMC rolled out the RII09 Training Package to industry with a series of workshops and road show events between August and December 2009. SkillsDMC industry skills advisors, located in each State and the Northern Territory, facilitated the workshops and will continue to oversee the implementation of the package and assist enterprises with the transition on the ground in the long term.
?We ran several information exchange workshops free of charge, explaining to our stakeholders what the new training package comprises and how it works,? Des said of the roll out. ?We also let them know that we provide posters free of charge, so that people can see the units of competency and how they fall in with the various qualifications. We literally had hundreds of people attend, so we were very happy with the feedback.
?The response of industry has been excellent in that they are very happy that we are now working on putting together the components endorsed by the National Quality Skills Council into our workforce planning and training needs analysis. The responses from the workshops have been really good, and we expect substantial take up in the system this year.?
PRODUCTIVITY PLACES PROGRAMME
Des Caulfield said that the changes in the training package to the units of competency were structural, not related to content, and that someone involved in training now, for example in the MNQ03 Extractive Industries Training Package, would not notice any major differences in the curriculum as the new national competency recognition system gradually took effect. There may be the potential as time goes on to incorporate issues such as sustainability, renewable energy, green skills and other carbon-friendly technologies into the units of competency, but even then that would be at the industry?s request and to reflect its needs.
He said that SkillsDMC was hopeful of receiving a ?reasonable allocation? of funds in the Enterprised Based Productivity Places Program[BH1] (EBPPP) which provides up to 90 per cent of the cost of training from Certificate III to Advanced Diploma level. In November 2009, the Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard announced that the Federal Government would co-fund up to 11,000 additional training places for small and medium business in a $25 million programme designed to address skills shortages as the economy improves.
The Government?s contribution will depend on the size of the enterprise, with organisations of less than 100 employees receiving back 90 per cent of their training costs, those with between 100 and 199 receiving 75 per cent, and those with 200 or more employees receiving 50 per cent.
Des Caulfield said that SkillsDMC was already negotiating with enterprises about participating in the EBPPP. He said the EBPPP had been a ?very good vehicle in which SkillsDMC has been able to show in a systematic way how to go about workforce planning and the development of the workforce culminating in the individuals attaining a credential based on what they do at work?.
He stated Boral had successfully participated in a trial of the PPP[BH2] conducted in 2009 and that SkillsDMC was now waiting to be advised of the funds that would be allocated for the industry sectors so that ?we can expand that to the rest of the industry this year?.
Organisations can contact their SkillsDMC industry skills advisor in their State or Territory for assistance with the new rationalised training package or to learn more about the PPP and EBPPP. For more information, visit www.skillsdmc.com.au