Focused on Recruitment

British Engineering Services Group discusses the value of opening its in-house training centre, especially in light of the pandemic.

The Paul Forrester Training Centre was launched in December 2020. British Engineering Services Group’s (BESG) standalone, in-house training centre ensures BESG can provide customer service while continuing to grow and support more businesses with statutory machinery and equipment inspection needs.

Industrial safety can be a matter of life or death and shouldn’t be left to chance. BESG works to make Britain and Ireland safer by partnering with organisations of all shapes and sizes and across all sectors to help keep their people safe, their businesses legally compliant and their machinery and equipment operational.

A thorough schedule of machinery and equipment examinations is important. The BESG team of experts knows about relevant legislation so our customers don’t have to – just one of the reasons why making sure our employees always get the very best training is key to the ongoing success of our business.

Investing in Our People

Investing in our team is extremely important to us. With our own training facility, we can focus on developing their skills in line with our customer needs. From our new starters to our longer servers, we make sure our team members take part in hands-on training throughout their careers. And with our in-house facility, we can now do this more efficiently.

The Paul Forrester Training Centre

The almost 20,000-ft2 training centre is located at the Birchwood Business Park in Warrington. Just off the M62, the location is ideal for trainees travelling from all over the U.K. and Ireland. In the first six months of 2021, it was visited by more than 45 new starters who all follow the same industry-leading internal training programme. And it’s not just used by new recruits: cross and upskill training also takes place.

The facility is fully kitted out with machinery and equipment for a realistic training environment. The space is filled with equipment that can be knocked, banged, pushed, pulled and thoroughly inspected as new team members learn the requirements of their roles. With everything from chair lifts to tractors to industrial boilers, we’ve got more than enough equipment to provide our trainees with a well-rounded experience. Most recently, we installed two passenger lifts to give our people the opportunity to work on fully functional elevators, take them “out of service,” inspect them and then put them back to work without causing any disruption to users.

The Northwest-based facility also has a large outdoor area. Equipment, such as forklift trucks, is moved outside so trainees can watch their trainer complete a “dummy” inspection with plenty of room to move around, learn and, eventually, mirror the process. 

Classroom learning is an important part of the in-depth training process, so trainees have access to several large, dedicated rooms at the training centre. Each of the rooms is kitted out with the latest technology. The Paul Forrester Training Centre also has picnic benches, Astroturf® and a small putting green inside the facility.

The Benefits of Internal Training

The decision to open our own training centre was an easy one. We now don’t have to rely as heavily on external locations to give our trainees the hands-on experience they need during their early learning period — a common approach adopted across much of our industry. Although effective, and still important for some types of kit, training at customer sites relies heavily on the availability of equipment, requiring travel to several locations for access to all of the relevant machinery, and arrangements can change with little notice, often making it difficult to find an alternative place to train. 

The Paul Forrester Training Centre provides efficiency and certainty. We can now plan and schedule training programmes without having to rely on external factors. In turn, we are able to put our trainees through our audit and “sign-off” process, and safely get them out to customer sites more efficiently.

Navigating the Challenges of Early 2021

The timing of the Paul Forrester Training Centre has been crucial for our company. As the world went into another period of lockdown, the facility meant we could continue to recruit and train our engineer surveyors, who were quickly given key worker status, safely and in line with government guidelines. The closing of previously used external locations did not impact us, and we were able to continue to meet our customers’ needs with minimal disruption. 

Our Ongoing Growth and Focus on Recruitment

We have continued to see business growth each year. As a result, we are continuously recruiting to ensure we have the capacity to help keep our customers safe, with plans to bring in more engineer surveyors throughout the second half of 2021 than ever before. With employees joining our company each month, the training centre has proved its value in a short amount of time. Hazel Doherty, head of training at BESG, said:

“The Paul Forrester Training Centre has had such a positive impact on our ability to train engineers. We’ve delivered more training than ever before in our first six months of opening and managed to do this in a safe and controlled manner during national lockdowns. It’s fantastic to be in a position where we can get this sort of investment for our people. We’re sure Paul Forrester, our technical manager of machinery for many years, and a true gentleman and voice of authority, known by so many in our world, would be proud to have put his name to something making such a difference to both our company and our industry.”