CPCS/CSCS scheme failing.

[Drains]

My telehandler Red Card is due to be upgraded to Blue. I spoke to a local approved trainer about it recently, and apart from telling me it would cost £700 for the upgrade he also suggested i don't bother.

His reasoning was that with the construction industry in a state, operators and firms can't afford to upgrade the many thousands of tickets which are due. There will be a huge number of operators therefore without current tickets, but still working, so the tickets will effectively have no value.

His opinion was that the CPCS/CSCS system was about to fail.

This trainer works for a local crane hire company. They dont bother with CPCS for themselves any more, they issue their own certificates of competence (to themselves and others), which are good for insurance companies, so good enough. It saves them from all the nonsense paperwork, log books, stupid test questions, expense of working through a national body.

His suggestion was that I get a certificate of competence from his company which would be valid for three years and be a fraction of the cost.

Anyone else have any experience/ knowledge of all this and the situation this second-rate, expensive and over-complicated certification system is in?

 

[rtbcomp]

??? CPCS/CSCS

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=298271#post298271

 

[Drains]

??? CPCS/CSCS

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=298271#post298271

Oh shut up Roger.

If you don't know what it is then you probably won't have any interest in the question, and certainly won't be able to contribute to any debate on the subject. Mmmwah.

However for those of you who feel excluded by my presumptuous use of trade-based acronyms, CPCS strands for Construction Plant Competence Scheme, and CSCS stands for Construction Skills Certification Scheme. The two schemes are related, are test and qualification based and were set up by nice Mr Blair as he wanted everyone in the UK to have an NVQ or equivalent in something, whether they liked it or not.

This house believes these schemes no longer have credibility.

Discuss.

 

[brightspark]

Oh shut up Roger.

If you don't know what it is then you probably won't have any interest in the question, and certainly won't be able to contribute to any debate on the subject. Mmmwah.

However for those of you who feel excluded by my presumptuous use of trade-based acronyms, CPCS strands for Construction Plant Competence Scheme, and CSCS stands for Construction Skills Certification Scheme. The two schemes are related, are test and qualification based and were set up by nice Mr Blair as he wanted everyone in the UK to have an NVQ or equivalent in something, whether they liked it or not.

This house believes these schemes no longer have credibility.

Discuss.

NVQ DOES THAT STAND FOR NOT VERRY QUALIFIED

 

[bluebobtail]

Hi to upgrade to a blue card do you not just need to be nvq assessed? Along with your log book.
I just got mine renewed last year luckily but it took some doing.
Trying to find someone in the firm i work for that could sign my form was more trouble than enough.
Have you sorted it now?

 

[mike os]

cscs/cpcs has always been worthless as far as I am concerned..like 99.9999% of what the lying bastard did ( and the 0.001% is questionable).. & i have worked in construction for neary 30 years

dont know where the scheme is going, but the way the industry is going.....

 

[rtbcomp]

.......
If you don't know what it is then you probably won't have any interest in the question, ...........

Au contraire - when I see something I don't understand, (women for example) I think that looks interesting, I wonder what that's all about?

However for those of you who feel excluded by my presumptuous use of trade-based acronyms, ........

You mean abbreviations -

an acronym is a word formed from the first, or first few, letters of a sequence of words.

 

[Drains]

Au contraire - when I see something I don't understand, (women for example) I think that looks interesting, I wonder what that's all about?

You mean abbreviations -

Clever clogs.

CPCS. Pronounced "kupucks". Acronym, see?. And CSCS is "Kusskuss"

So no less an acronym than O.P.E.C. or for that matter, S.M.E.G.

 

[ford34/2]

Construction Industry

the mere fact the whols of the construction industry has not had a penny rise or an extra hours holiday for more than 4 full years is witness to the state of the industry and its importance in the economy-- ever here us mentioned on the news regarding our lump sum and and retirement pensions??

did you hear tell the olympics is on budget with their constuction outlay-- neither wonder, every one is working on 2007 wages.
Cscs cards--one money making scheme that does not benefit the people that it is meant to help

RANT OVER.

Building worker for 50 years

 

[mike os]

must admit that I have always concidered it a tradesmans tax....just another way to raise money

 

[Drains]

must admit that I have always concidered it a tradesmans tax....just another way to raise money

It's not though surely? Do the government make a profit from it? My suspicion is that it was brought in with good intentions but incompetent methods and on a flawed basis. It's the people who set it up who should be trying (and probably failing) to get certificates, not us!

 

[mike os]

well lets put it like this...

can you get work with a major contractor without one?

even with a file full of industry recognised certs & courses I apparently "need" a cscs card for each qualification.... despite the fact that I already hold craft & advanced craft certs etc.... to actually do them all I would need about 9 months in "training"... & what, £20-30k?... repeat in 3-5yrs.

Do you actually get anything for paying ?... other than another piece of paper saying you can do what the previous piece of paper said you could, backing up the pieces of paper you already had to do to become a tradesman before they fcuked up the whole training scheme.

Maybe tax is too nice a term.... how about jobs for the boys instead? achieves nothing, produces nothing but more legislation & paperwork, and money for the organisation, training orginisations & insurers/lawyers..... but in reality does sweet FA for the construction industry except cost us time, money & resources we already dont have.


ooh... a rant

 

[Hitch]

We have CSCS cards. Most of them were put in for when it first started, where the employer says the person in question is competent.....i did mine later, i have a related skills card, a white one.


One of ours, has a blue card, Welder/Fabricator and Slinger/Banksman
Its laughable that he has that. Hes a machinest, doesnt weld, and the last person on earth you'd have sling a load up.

Only been asked for it a handful of times, only big sites.

 

[Shox Dr]

Much like the new Gas Safe cert. I know of 3 plumbers that not renewing because of cost. 1500quid down, plus the lost earnings for a week taking the coarse.

Not too bad for people around here that want to do the coarse as, as I understand it the only place to do the training is in Hull. So the poor b@ggers that have to B&B it while doing the coarse it's even more expense

 

[KennyC]

must admit that I have always concidered it a tradesmans tax....just another way to raise money

+1 I have been working as a joiner since 2007 (shopfitting/ kitchens) and none of the five of us in the company have CSR card, never been asked for one entering a site either, mind you building site work has been very slow in the last few years.

 

[Drains]

I first came across the scheme in 2002(?) or so, working on a university build in Edinburgh. Nobody, or at least very few, had CSCS cards but the main contractor - HBG - was insistent that they wouldn't be letting people on their up-coming sites without them, their reason being it was meant to improve safety and competence, They were very hot on site safety I recall.

My recollection is that it was something the big contractors worked up, along with CITB and government support. I know Blair gets it in the neck for stupid targets etc, and fair enough, but there were lots of other institutions and companies who thought, in their wisdom, that they were doing the right thing.

The road to hell is, as they say, paved with good intentions.

Anyway, back to my original question, does anyone have any idea of the future of this scheme - is it going to fail? And also, re driving plant, are there other, cheaper, better options for demonstrating competence which insurance companies and contractors will be happy with?

 

[Welderpaul]

We've all got them. 75% of our work is on the big sites that won't let you past the induction room without one. We all have IPAF cards as well (International Powered Access Federation). Some of us have CPCS cards too for various bits of kit.

Whilst they may not have it quite right just yet, the scheme has certainly got the idiot chancers off the sites - those that were totally incompetent and downright dangerous.

There used to be masses of various plant competency cards around - some Main Contractors did there own, limited to just their own sites (Consisted of trundling round site in whatever machine while a busy site manager half watched them while doing something else), lots of fly by night training companies, and there were lots of fakes bought in pubs. CPCS has got rid of all that. I'd like to know if someone is driving near me in 10T+ of telehandler that they have proper training and not some Mickey Mouse one.
I wonder how many lives the scheme has saved.

There are other options for basic competencies/plant training around. How long is it going to take for the big main contractors to start accepting them? A long time. I've not heard anything about the CSCS/CPCS schemes failing. I'll ask my safety man when i next see him if he knows. He has his ear to the ground like that.

 

[TechnicAl]

CPCS didnt that used to be Russia

 

[MarkMG]

The CCCP

 

[Drains]

The CCCP

Naah, that's Cheshire County Cricket Plub.