Sector Focus on Marine, Aerospace and Defence
A new project to help companies get the most out of their technical staff and access funding for training has recently been launched by Marine South East and other partners to provide support to Aerospace, Marine and Defence employers across the Southeast. The Technical Skills Project (TSP) was introduced following a series of extensive surveys and research of employer needs across these sectors commissioned by Marine South East and the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium and funded by SEEDA.
Employers generally found it difficult to engage with the public sector and were confused by the huge range of initiatives available to them. Many were aware that a considerable sum of public sector investment was available but were not clear how to access the funding.
The TSP, which will be delivered by Winchester Consulting Limited, intends to help employers engage with a wide variety of funded initiatives at all levels. Winchester Consulting has been working closely with Marine Southeast, the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium and SEEDA for over a year and put together the final research programme that led to the TSP agreement.
Richard Smith, who will be leading the project at Winchester Consulting, commented "This project is an important step to help companies ensure that they have the right level of support to move forward. High tech is a growth area and we want to make sure that companies have the appropriate support to ensure they are ahead of the competition.
"For example, there is funding out there to support companies, but often they just don't know how to access it. We will be working with small and medium enterprises as well as some large companies to help them access the support they need from the variety of sources available including funding agencies, FE colleges, universities, research councils and others."
The TSP will also provide a re-deployment service which will support employers to help staff at risk of redundancy. This support will be facilitated through the use of CWeb, a web-based Placement Support and Job Vacancy database system, which helps employees at risk find new work in the same sector, while also providing employers with direct access to people wishing to work in the same sector.
This approach has been successfully applied across the East Midlands through the Midlands Engineering Industries Redeployment Group (MEIRG) and continues today through the Career Chain Project funded by the East Midlands Regional Development Agency.
The programme is due to start this month, if you would like to find out more email richard.smith@wincon.co.uk
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