Skills and standards

The Scaffolding Association is steadily gaining greater recognition and respect and playing its part in building a safer environment for our employees, suppliers and clients.

Our first President, Russell Maxwell-Smith, who is the owner and founder of WellMax Scaffolding, was introduced as the Association’s President at our AGM last month.

Russell talked about how our growing reputation for delivering high-quality advice and support, combined with our shared common vision to raise standards, puts the Association in a strong position to bring about positive change in the access and scaffolding industry.

More than 50 members attended the AGM on what turned out to be the hottest June day since 1976! If you want to read a bit more about what we discussed, take a look at our AGM Report on page 21.

We had another opportunity to spend quality time with a cross section of industry professionals at the Safety & Health Expo (SHE) at ExCeL in London. Meeting many members and scaffolding companies at the show gave us a great opportunity to discuss the different health and safety issues that affect their day-to-day operations.

There is perhaps no more important issue within the scaffolding and access industry than health and safety, so keeping abreast of the latest developments in this area is one of the ways that we can serve our membership and the industry as a whole.

Part of our commitment to members is to ensure that our voice is heard and understood by key influencers and stakeholders. We continue to lobby government agencies and other trade bodies to ensure they understand the challenges our members face and capacity we have to respond to their expectations.

We will therefore be returning to UK Construction Week, at the NEC in Birmingham, as part of our plan to improve awareness within the wider construction community.

There have been some really great stories in the press recently about women in scaffolding. We’re all aware that, in percentage terms, very few women work in manual roles in construction and it’s very positive to see a more diverse resource base where the profile of women in scaffolding is rising.

What’s so important for our sector is that we are attractive to new entrants – female and male – and that we are encouraging new people who are passionate, keen to train and get qualified, and committed to working to the high standards that we all aspire to.

We are in discussion with CSCS about a new industry-led skills card scheme. We are working with specialist contractors of all sizes and our key objective is to increase the level and quality of training among scaffolders and reward individuals and businesses that commit to regular training while giving scaffolders another option to demonstrate that they have achieved qualified skills standards.

We’ll be looking to update the industry soon, so keep an eye out for more information on this new scheme for scaffolders.

Robert Candy Chief executive Scaffolding Association