Alex Pond, Managing Director of Intertrain describes the Small Plant blended learning programme being offered by Kineo and Intertrain

Many of you in the rail sector will know me as Manging Director of Intertrain but what you might not know is that two years ago our business was acquired by the global credentialing, skills and training organisation, City & Guilds.

We took the decision to join City & Guilds partly because of their credentials as a charity that reinvests their profits back into improving training in sectors like rail, and partly to enable us to grow Intertrain and access a much broader set of skills to allow us to diversify and innovate our product and service offering.

Our new small plant operative training course is a prime example of how being part of the City & Guilds business has allowed us to innovate for the future of training in the rail industry. Working with Kineo, City & Guilds award winning e-learning business, we have been able to develop the UK rail sector’s first ever Small Plant blended learning programme.

So, what is the benefit to your business that this programme is blended (or partly off online and partly face-to-face in a classroom) I hear you ask? Well, put quite simply, by taking a blended learning approach we have been able to reduce learning hours by around 30 per cent, thereby minimising time spent on the course away from working hours. We do this whilst ensuing that you get the same robust, high-quality training that you would expect your team would have got using traditional face-to-face training.

How do we do that? Essentially all the parts of the training that are theoretical rather than practical will be taught online rather than requiring businesses to release staff for the whole of the training as try would have had to have done in the past. There is a real benefit for delegates too as it gives them the flexibility to learn at their own pace, fitting around business and personal commitments.

This is a first step in us bringing innovative new digital training practices to the rail sector and you can expect to see much more in the future. We will continue to work with employers in the rail industry to improve the competency of our workforce through digital and blended learning.

In the years ahead Intertrain and City & Guilds Group will be expanding their portfolio of collaborative training programmes, focussing on areas such as Railway Technical and Health and Safety disciplines.

 If you’d like to find out more about the Small Plant Operative or talk to me about blended learning, drop me a line alex.pond@intertrain.biz