DOUBLE HONOURS FOR BALFOUR BEATTY’S DEGREE PROGRAMME

DOUBLE HONOURS FOR BALFOUR BEATTY’S DEGREE PROGRAMME

Balfour Beatty Engineering Service’s (BBES) award winning academic programme has received a double seal of approval from two of the construction industry’s leading bodies.

The programme, run in partnership with Liverpool Community College and Liverpool John Moores University, has just been formally accredited for the next five years by the Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers (CIBSE). The industry training organisation Summit Skills has also officially endorsed the programme – the first time ever a degree course has achieved this recognition. It is also the first degree course to secure the endorsement of both SummitSkills and Foundation degree Forward (FDF) which is a quality mark, confirming that the course content matches the skills that employers require from employees looking to work in their sector.

BBES invests £500,000 each year in the programme. This investment funds the tuition fees, living and accommodation costs for all 76 students on the four year course and reflects Balfour Beatty’s long term commitment to promote excellence in the construction industry.

Learning and Development Manager Lee Walters said: “These accreditations are a tremendous endorsement of the quality of the programme and add even more weight to the BSc Honours degree students get at the end of it. Our partnership with the Community College and LJMU goes back 17 years. To have achieved a renewed seal of approval from CIBSE and the Summit Skills endorsement is a real boost.

Earlier this week 10 graduates celebrated with one receiving first class honours and eight achieving 2:1s with honours. Already applications are flooding in for the next academic year and HR Director Gordon Rae predicts they will be oversubscribed. He said:

“We are committed to recruiting only the most talented and skilled people to work on our projects. This partnership has worked incredibly well in terms of allowing young people to access the highest quality education and training with real job opportunities at the end of it. This is probably the very best course of its kind in the UK and we committed to continuing to support it.”

CIBSE is the standard setter and authority on building services engineering. SummitSkills is the Sector Skills Council for the building services engineering sector.