Training rush

The port has made an initial investment of £100,000 in the new centre, which opened in February, but has also earmarked another site within the port where a larger facility could be built.

“Because we are extending our workforce and are always so busy, we were facing difficulties with fitting training in. It was even difficult to keep up with refresher training,” says Mr Lawlor.

Blyth Harbour Commissioners took the decision to “bite the bullet” and invest in an in-port training facility. The new Port Training Services looks set to serve the whole region – and not just the ports industry. A training manager and training assessor are both in place.

“The amount of interest regionally has been overwhelming,” says Mr Lawlor. He believes there will be enough external demand for training to meet the costs of the centre and provide the internal training, too.

The strong focus will be on port-related heavy plant, reach-stacker, forklift and crane operations, but the centre will also offer training to wider industry, such as mining, covering forklift operations, bulldozer work and other areas. There are also plans to offer longer-term unemployed people 13 weeks’ placed training.

“This investment is partly to improve the quality of our own training, which will give us productivity and cargo care advantages, but equally to provide training courses regionally – and it could be wider than that,” says Mr Lawlor. “It is a bit of a unique package because rather than being a typical training organisation sat on some industrial estate, it is actually within a working environment.

“This centre will improve the quality of training, which will be valuable; generally speaking, the ports up and down the east coast UK are busy and there is a difficulty in getting hold of quality trained people.”