About the speaker

In the mid-1990s the engineering community in the UK embarked upon a pioneering venture, the Engineering Reformation Project, which sought to produce no less than a set of generic competence standards for operator, craft and supervisory job functions in engineering and manufacturing. The outcome was a new suite of Units of Competence designed for use across different sectors. The Occupational Standards Council, comprising representatives from all aspects of engineering and manufacturing education, training and development and industry, was established in 1996 to act as the independent custodian of the new generic standards. Tim Feest, recruited as the Executive Director of the OSC for Engineering, describes how the Reformation Project standards were developed and used; how a similar set of generic competence standards was developed for ‘higher level’ engineering functions; and the evolutionary process which resulted in both sets of standards being subsequently merged to produce the current Engineering Competence Reference Standards. He presents details of how the use of the generic standards by Sector Skills Councils and other Standards Setting Bodies is monitored through a voluntary peer-review group; and shows how the use of the generic standards can offer benefits to employers and employees with regard to development of skills, career progression and flexibility and mobility in the workforce.