Cogent Skills

“Overall it’s had a positive impact on my career as it has helped to land me a job in a very competitive industry. I’ve been able to get quality experience over the past 2 years which I think has been invaluable. Everyone from the Course Director, Apprenticeship Team and the Team in my day-to-day role made it a great experience and I really enjoyed it.”

““Our partnership with Cogent Skills has been instrumental in shaping our future talent pipeline. “Working with Cogent has enabled us to invest in early careers while honouring the legacy of our rich manufacturing heritage in Leeds, and it aligns with our commitment to long-term workforce sustainability and the strategic development of critical capabilities.””

“The great thing about investing in apprenticeships is that you can tailor the training to your specific standards and behaviors. We spend four years with them, with three of those years spent on site, making them valuable members of the team. By the time they complete their apprenticeship, they are already competent technicians, and they just fit straight in with the rest of the team.”

“By getting this right, we can give our front-line engineers real confidence in delivering work safely and get new starters more productive sooner against low risk, high-volume tasks. This will ultimately improve safety, provide a more engaged workforce and deliver financial savings to our customers.”

“Our Cogent Skills CMS framework innovation has improved the end-to-end competency management process across Gas Transmission, enabled business improvements across a national geographical spread to the operational field force and halved the time it would take through our traditional safety and technical competency plan”

“Whilst still in the early stages, our Cogent Skills CMS framework innovation has delivered some great business results so far.”

“Competency management is about so much more than just training. It's about understanding the tasks we carry out, the risks associated and the skills, knowledge, experience and training an individual needs to be able to demonstrate they can manage the risk robustly to deliver the task safely. By getting this right, we can give our front-line engineers real confidence in delivering work safely and get new starters more productive sooner against low risk, high-volume tasks. This will ultimately improve safety, provide a more engaged workforce and deliver financial savings to our customers.”

“We've changed our thinking that training equals competence, to focusing on the fact that assessment provides a true reflection of a person's workplace competence”

“The trials have been extremely valuable in substantiating what works, what works well, what doesn't work and what we need to change. Our Cogent Skills CMS framework innovation has improved the end-to-end competency management process across Gas Transmission, enabled business improvements across a national geographical spread to the operational field force and halved the time it would take through our traditional safety and technical competency plan”

“Traditionally we used appoint people, congratulate them on getting the job, then moved all of that to one side and say, 'you now need to do all of this National Grid training' So it could historically take a new member of staff the best part of a year to achieve competence to actually undertake the role that we'd appointed them into. This caused major staff retention problems, as well as significant productivity and utilisation delays”

“Whilst still in the early stages, our Cogent Skills CMS framework innovation has delivered some great business results so far. It's improved the end-to-end competency management process across Gas Transmission, enabled a more robust demonstration of competency evidence across a national geographical spread to the operational field force, and significantly reduced the time it would normally take through our traditional safety and technical competency plan for individuals to achieve authorisations”

“Therefore we contacted Cogent who with their years of experience developing Process Safety courses could assist us in our Process Safety journey. Cogent was able to work with us and produce an bespoke course that fully meet our needs; additionally their highly experienced trainers were able to effectively deliver the message to our personnel.”

“The training has worked well - in fact, it's exceed our expectations and feedback from the client has been particularly good. It's been a really enjoyable process for us and not been too difficult to get the training together because Cogent and their trainers have really helped out - they've been exceptional.”

“Our challenge with developing a Process Safety training course was that due to Covid we were resource limited. Furthermore we had a goal in rolling the courses prior to the end of 2021; thus we were working under a tight time deadline. Therefore we contacted Cogent who with their years of experience developing Process Safety courses could assist us in our Process Safety journey. Cogent was able to work with us and produce an bespoke course that fully meet our needs; additionally their highly experienced trainers were able to effectively deliver the message to our personnel.”

“Process Safety is especially important to our company - it is one of our cornerstones. We needed to look at all of the systems, where the major accident hazards are and move to a model which fully considers Process Safety. We are still in the initial stages of our Process Safety Training. We do believe that this training will support out efforts in ensuring that we reduce the likelihood of a major accident hazard.”

“Cogent Skills brings the external expertise of embedding a long- term competence management system development into our business and we're confident that we're now aligned with a supplier who understands what we are trying to achieve”

“We'd started to do more of our Process Safety Management training with Cogent Skills, which gave us confidence in their high hazard compliance knowledge and after they presented their competence management capabilities, we felt at the time and are very confident now, that we've made the right decision.”

“In a nutshell, I would wrap up our experience of working with Cogent Skills on our CMS journey by saying we've got simplicity, we've got structure where structure didn't exist before and it is starting to be embedded. I'm definitely seeing the benefits of the consistency that we were craving”

“We'd started to do more of our Process Safety Management training with Cogent Skills, which gave us confidence in their high hazard compliance knowledge and after they presented their competence management capabilities, we felt at the time and are very confident now, that we've made the right decision. Cogent Skills brings the external expertise of embedding a long- term competence management system development into our business and we're confident that we're now aligned with a supplier who understands what we are trying to achieve”

“Developing a competence management framework felt like a daunting animal that we didn't really know how to tackle. We needed to do something better as our previous competence management focus had been on developing IT systems and satisfying the HSE's 15 Principles guidelines requirements - as opposed to defining an individual's behavioural safety skills and knowledge.”

“If I'd have had the ability to access these types of lessons learned from other industry peers when I was starting out on my Competence Management journey, I think that we would be on a very different stage than we are on today. We would be in a much more advanced and embedded stage”

“Cogent has been fundamental in securing me great host employers and has been really supportive throughout.”

“Cogent Skills and The Emerald Academy work has been fundamental to providing the ideal structure and foundation in terms of defining the required standards to demonstrate we are in control of those hazards. These standards are the key to assess the employee capability against what is required. As the assessment work progresses then in turn the level of standards will be raised, competence assurance more visible and it will contribute further to the site preventing and mitigating accidents and incidents.”

“The workforce training & competency programme developed by the Widnes site through its foundation of the Emerald Academy is the best example of such a scheme I have seen in over 40 years in the industry. The quality and diversity of the training materials is excellent allowing a thorough understanding of the key learning points and job competencies at all levels of the organisation. This training not only sets up our employees for immediate success but ongoing success for many years to come.”

“A way to solve the skills challenge is by creating a more diverse, inclusive and skilled workforce in the nuclear sector. The UK government will continue to work with the industry to achieve these important objectives and is committed to promoting opportunities for women and underrepresented groups in the sector”