SummitSkills, the Sector Skills Council for building services
engineering, has launched a project to ensure that a skilled
workforce is in place should the UK host the Olympic and
Paralympic Games.
The Olympic Skills project will see SummitSkills planning to
work with partner Sector Skills Councils, local authorities,
developers and employers across the city to develop training
programmes and apprenticeship schemes to produce the
necessary building services engineers that are needed to create
the Olympic Village and other structures for the event.
“With every element of the Olympic infrastructure needing
the core building services - electricity, plumbing, heating,
ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration – having the right
number of skilled people in these areas is going to be vital in
getting the city prepared for 2012,” said Blane Judd, Operations
Director of SummitSkills. “The planning has to start now to
develop the skills in the local community so that the skills are
available to resource the huge workforce requirement.
“The resource planning undertaken at this stage will be
beneficial to the Thames Gateway project, which will also need
a considerable amount of building services engineers.”
The London Olympic Games would generate demand for
7,000 full-time equivalent construction related workers, for the
estimated 9,000 new homes and over 100,000 sq metres of
stadia. The massive increase in local employment opportunity
has, when taken with other major developments in the Thames
Gateway, enormous potential to transform East London’s
current employment levels.
