March sees another significant milestone for LEEA in the region, explains Justin Boehm, Regional Manager for Australia and New Zealand, with the launch of Licenced Training Centres.
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The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) is proud to announce the launch of Licenced Training Centres (LTC), a strategic initiative that will significantly improve the training and safety standards of the lifting equipment industry in Australia and New Zealand.
“This project is a result of collaboration and consultation between LEEA, our members and the end-users of lifting equipment,” said Justin.
“It reflects our vision and mission to promote excellence and professionalism in the sector. It’s also an enormous benefit for our industry stakeholders, who look to LEEA to ensure our members have the most up to date skills to ensure safety on their sites at all time.”
The LTC project aims to establish a network of licenced training centres across both Australia and NZ, where experienced and qualified trainers will deliver LEEA’s high-quality courses for lifting equipment technicians. LEEA’s courses cover a comprehensive range of topics and skills that are essential for the profession, such as inspection, testing, maintenance, repair, design and operation of various types of lifting equipment.
In the past, LEEA’s trainers have flown in from the UK Head Office to deliver face-to-face training, which was put to an abrupt halt during the COVID-19 years.
“Now we’re clear of the COVID days, we needed a permanent solution to ensure our members could get training delivered face-to-face, in a timely manner, wherever they may be. With licenced training centres, we now have that.” Justin said.
LEEA’s Foundation, Lifting Accessories (formerly Lifting Equipment General) and Manual Lifting Machines (formerly Lifting Machines Manual) will be delivered by our LTC partners in the coming weeks, meaning we will have a formalised mechanism to deliver the prerequisite courses for our newly established Certificate IV in Lifting Equipment Testing and Inspection. These are the first courses the LTCs will deliver, with the additional course, Verification of Competency and assessments for the Cert IV to follow shortly. All our LTCs are Registered Training Organisations.
The requirement for our LTCs be Registered Training Organisations (RTO), is to ensure we have compliance aligned to the Australian Skill Quality Authority Framework, which verifies the competence and skills of the RTO. Then combining our industry based training, we will have industry technicians, holding nationally accredited training, with relevant skills and a qualification recognised by end users, stakeholders and regulators.
LEEA’s courses have always been taught with Australian and New Zealand standards as their basis, informed by our global connectivity. These standards and global know-how reflect best practice and regulations for our industry. The licenced training centres will also provide our members and their techs ongoing professional development opportunities. This is something lacking from our industry for too long.
The licenced training centres will be regularly audited and monitored by LEEA to ensure compliance with the high standards and expectations set by the association. The centres will be required to follow strict guidelines and procedures for quality assurance and, combined with structured reporting requirements with ASQA, we can be assured of high quality delivery. The centres will also be subject to feedback and evaluation from the learners, assessors and LEEA members, to ensure continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.
By implementing the LTC project, for our members, LEEA has demonstrated our commitment to excellence and safety in the lifting equipment industry. We also hope this contributes to the well-being of the technicians in our industry. Without a dedicated Nationally Accredited Training course, many of our industry people don’t believe their work is significant, but we know the work of our people is of high value and believe that this project and the delivery of the Certificate IV will be a success and a source of pride for all of us.
The LTC project is expected to deliver its first round of training in April, with our Senior Trainer – Dave Tucker – having conducted the last round of training to the LTCs in February. We invite all our members, partners and stakeholders to join us in this exciting journey and support us in making this project a reality.
Visit LEEA.com.au for more information and to book your course (members only).
READ MORE:
- LEEA’s LiftEx 2024 receives major boost.
- LEEA makes headway with safe lifting.
- LEEA launches Cert IV at LiftEx 2023.