Corporate liability legislation underpins the need for technical staff to be properly trained and competent to work safely. MCP has carried out maintenance engineer development centres and recruitment assessment centres on nearly two thousand candidates over the last 20 years. We have learnt many lessons along the way.

In the early days, before we did preview sessions and communication sessions, I was on-site preparing to start a maintenance development centre. I went into the engineering manager’s office and found (let’s call him) Dave, holding the engineering manager by the throat, saying, “I’ve been maintaining these machines for years and now you want me to do some assessments on my maintenance skills!” Industrial language has been deleted.

Why should I carry out a maintenance development centre?

There was an accident on a customer site. The accident was life-changing for the maintenance technician involved and the Health and Safety Executive were called in to investigate. The findings of the investigation were:

There was little evidence of competence and poor training records
Many technicians were carrying out complex maintenance tasks without serving an apprenticeship
The number of time-served technicians was insufficient
There was little recorded training on the technicians’ files

The customer reviewed their training records and some of the equipment on their sites. MCP carried out some initial competence-based training on some workshop equipment.

A maintenance development centre was then tailored to assess the skills of the maintenance workforce.

Following the centre:

Successful candidates were awarded a certificate of competence across core maintenance tasks
Candidates who did not meet the standard received training to get them up to standard. They were reassessed as part of the training. If successful they were awarded a certificate of competence
A structure of trained trainers and assessors was created across the business to enable technicians to demonstrate competence in the same core maintenance tasks in the workplace. Subsequently this method of training and assessing skills was rolled out across additional maintenance tasks to give further evidence of competence
There was a much safer working environment
The improved technical competence led to improved line availability

Why should I carry out a maintenance development centre within the Automotive industry?

A customer was struggling to retain skilled maintenance technicians as there are other companies nearby paying significantly higher wages. Most of the technicians were of very high calibre, having gone through the company apprenticeship scheme.

The company created a senior technician role as part of the structure. To achieve senior technician’s status, the candidate would need to undergo an interview process and a technical assessment centre. The assessment centre was developed through talking to MCP and reviewing the existing assessment material and adding elements where appropriate. Assessments included:

Safe isolation of three phase supply
Fault finding using electrical instruments
Inverter set up
Generic and specific fault finding on a programmable controller
Using electrical drawings as a fault-finding aid
Robotics theory
Mechanical theory
Belt or chain tension and alignment
Electro-pneumatic fault-finding
Building a pneumatic circuit

Successful completion of the assessment centre resulted in an MCP certificate of competence, a significant pay rise for the technicians and improved retention of key staff.

Why should I carry out a maintenance development centre within a Distribution centre?

A large distribution centre was opening, they had the requirement to recruit tens of maintenance technicians with specific skills. Experience of opening other distribution facilities had led to many technicians being recruited with large skills gaps.

MCP worked with the customer to develop a recruitment assessment centre, the assessments we developed included:

Safe isolation of three-phase supply
Fault finding using electrical instruments
Inverter set up
Generic programmable controller fault-finding
Using electrical drawings as a fault-finding aid
Strip and rebuild a pump
Mechanical theory
Belt or chain tension and alignment
Electro-pneumatic fault-finding
Scenario-based interview
Computer networking theory

MCP carried out the recruitment assessment centre and recommended staff who had achieved an agreed standard. The customer then carried out their interview process prior to recruiting a proportion of the technically competent staff.

Summary

We carried out a practical assessment centre for one company about ten years ago. Every time they recruit a new member of staff, we put them through a similar suite of assessments to ensure that the staff are competent.

The definition of competence that we use at MCP is that staff can do the task: