Spotlight on Assured Competence

at Brecon Pharmaceuticals Limited

At PAA\VQ-SET’s first National Conference in 2004 Ann Randall, PAA\VQ-SET’s Chief Executive, introduced the Assured Competence Scheme; designed for organisations whose employees have achieved NVQs as a way of maintaining skills and providing the reassurance of an external audit process. Des Preece, the Training and Standards Development Manager at Brecon Pharmaceuticals Limited, was instantly taken by the idea and Brecon Pharmaceuticals Limited became the first organisation to gain approval for the Assured Competence Scheme in June 2006, as one of two pilot programmes.

Here Des explains why they chose the Assured Competence Scheme:

“At PAA\VQ-SET’s 2004 Conference, Ann Randall introduced an interesting concept; that of assuring that members of a workforce previously assessed as competent through the traditional National Vocational system were maintaining this level of competence over a prolonged period of time. In effect, ‘life after NVQs’.

Her idea was that a company would develop a system that was relevant to their needs and would stand the test of external evaluation. It was the responsibility of a company to develop, introduce and assess operators by developing a model for assured competence.

Its philosophy was simplistic but with a powerful outcome. On occasions when client audits focused on training within the company, there was always the need to justify the NVQ system as being robust enough to identify and maintain ongoing competence levels. An assured competence model approved by an external body would certainly alleviate any client concerns, even internal concerns.

A strategy was developed containing criteria that an operator could be assessed against to prove immediate competence. Four experienced operators, all with NVQ Level 2 in Packaging Operations were used to “test” the developed system.

The system was very demanding and during June 2006 Brecon Pharmaceuticals became the first company in the UK to become an approved centre for this model and the candidates, Rob Matthews, Kelly Chittock, Sheila Allen and Dawn Mereweather became a part of training and assessment history!”