Tarmac is celebrating 12 months of success at its first-class training facility – the National Skills and Safety Park, one year on from its official opening by His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge.
The leading sustainable construction materials business launched the Park, located at an active quarry near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, to provide practical, hands-on training for emerging industry talent – including apprentices, graduates and those retraining from other sectors.
Tarmac employees quickly adapted to Covid-secure working last spring to allow studies to continue and have since introduced further online working to supplement safe and appropriate face-to-face training.
Despite 2020’s challenging circumstances, the facility has already supported nearly 700 employees through over 21,000 face to face, virtual classroom and e-learning sessions since its inauguration. It has additionally supported 34 individuals graduate from Tarmac’s own accredited Professional Operator Development Programme qualification.
Graeme Boylen, human resources director at Tarmac said, “We’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved at the facility one year on from its official launch. It’s a great testimony to the quality and commitment of our Learning and Development team who have worked hard to ensure important professional development activity can continue safely. The alternative methods of training have been a real success.
“With next week marking National Careers Week (1-5 March), it is important we reflect on the value of championing talent within the industry. As a business, we are committed to developing our people with the aim of creating a highly-skilled workforce to support the delivery of the UK’s future infrastructure ambitions. We are looking forward to further developing our training offer at the Park, providing even more opportunities in the months to come.”
In February last year, His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge marked the official opening of the park by meeting several of Tarmac’s apprentices and graduates, as well as trying his hand at road building, and trialling cutting edge quarrying and occupational health simulators.
Tarmac is proud to be a member of the 5% Club, an organisation committed to ensuring that in the next five years 5 per cent of its members in the UK workforce are young people on training schemes.
