Bespoke solutions
the client

The client is one of the UK’s leading civil engineering companies, with a great reputation for quality, safety and engineering innovation.

the requirement

Although the company had been using training records software for years at head office, this no longer met its needs. Reference Point was appointed to develop a single custom-built system that would manage all learning, induction, and training activities for thousands of construction staff. The new application also needed to provide a scalable platform for future system development and integration with other client primary systems.

the solution

The client’s training activities run from site-based informal tool box talks as well as induction, up to formally assessed NVQ achievement and offsite safety critical courses.

As work does not just happen Monday to Friday 9 ‘til 5 within civil engineering, the system would need to be accessible at every site, business unit and head office at all times.

Throughout the construction sector, there is also a major drive to raise safety standards via the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) and the client also wanted the system to monitor possession and validity of CSCS cards.

As staff are adding to their skills all the time, Reference Point was also asked to generate staff CVs directly from the system to the client business development team for use in tenders.

Initial solution development took approximately 6 months to complete and, since then, there have been a series of significant, planned development stages. These latter additions have included managing the entire annual review process within the system for all employees, as well as monitoring planned training activity against budgets.

System training and implementation has been managed internally by the client’s dedicated project manager who has been actively involved in the rollout to business units and onto sites.

Commenting on the project, the Director of Human Resources, said: "We are very pleased with the system. For the first time we have a seamless solution gathering and managing all training data from site to head office level."

"This includes every induction, toolbox talk as well as all formal safety critical training. We also have all NVQ management integrated into the same system, as well as tracking other essentials such as CSCS card possession."

"Using Reference Point to develop the solution was, in our view, essential to the project’s success, as they have such a knowledge base in relation to learning, training and NVQs and they’ve been fantastic to work with."