Cogent’s Gold
Standard for the Process Industry.
What is the Gold Standard?
 The Gold Standard defines the
skills, competencies and qualifications required for world-class industries.
It means that employers can
benchmark their job roles against an industry recognised and endorsed standard.
They will then be able to better define their skill needs and make clear what
kind of training provision they require. All of this can then be dovetailed
with available funding.
Cogent is now keen to implement
the Gold Standard across all key job roles and at all levels, and to work with
the industry to ensure that the standard is maintained by aligning it with
rigorous competence assurance processes which ensure that the role profiles are
always completely current.
Background:
The Gold Standard
concept emerged from the Chemical Leadership Council and was taken up by Cogent
to develop for the process industry. The Gold Standard is an aspirational
standard for ‘world class’ skills. The idea is to develop, through industry
consultation, a Gold Standard for the key job roles in Chemicals,
Pharmaceuticals and Polymers. The Gold Standards will be used by the National
Skills Academy for Process Industries to define training requirements and
ensure that local, quality assured provision is in place.
Initial work by
Cogent and a number of chemical companies identified four categories of skills:
- Technical
& Competence
- Business Improvement Skills
- Compliance
- Functional and Behavioural (FAB) Skills
Two job roles,
Process Operator (level 2) & Process Technician (level 3), were then
selected for Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals (ongoing) and Polymers giving a total
of six Gold Standards. Through consultation with a small group of employers the
qualifications and training required to ‘do
the job to world class standard’ were then defined; these make up the draft
Gold Standards that are now being widely consulted, (please see below for
details of how to provide feedback on the roles so far).
The available
qualifications in categories 1, 2 and 3 were easy to define; the process now is
to ensure that they represent what employers consider to be ‘world class’ or
best available. Under functional skills it would be useful to capture any ‘soft
skills’ training such as team working.
HSEQ training was
more complex and it was decided to undertake a separate piece of work to
specify the HSEQ Gold Standard; it would be helpful for companies to list any
specific HSEQ training they routinely perform.
Long term the
Gold Standards for other job roles will be rolled out; the first line
supervisor (level 4) role will include more of the softer skills such as
Business Management and Leadership.
FEEDBACK: We would be delighted to hear back from employers on
how they value and apply qualifications. Please consider the questions below.
- What happens in your business?
-
Do you routinely use the qualifications listed in the draft Gold Standard?
-
Do you
routinely use other qualifications for Competence, Technical, Productivity
or Key skills? Please list them
-
There
are numerous Engineering qualifications; Cogent values PEO over PMO and
would recommend PEO; do you agree or do you use and value PMO?
- Do
you use other engineering qualifications? Please list them.
-
Do you
currently use the NVQs in Business Improvement Techniques?
- Cogent
is in the process of developing a HSEQ training programme; what HSEQ
qualifications do you use? Please list them (i.e. IOSH, risk assessment,
manual handling)
-
Any
other comments?
Please complete
and email these and any feedback to the questions to john.holton@cogent-ssc.com
You can also
download the consultation sheets for four of the Gold Standard roles below:
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