During my time as Head of Programmes at Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, I decided we needed to revamp the way we approached Project Management training and that given we had an internal training arm we should be providing this training ourselves giving us maximum flexibility.
I engaged with Rebecca Tarbox who was Head of Funding and Delivery at AeroAcademy (training arm of MADG) and the objective was twofold:
- To bring inhouse Project and Risk Management APM accredited delivery to save money and embed more Marshall relevant content
- To introduce PM Apprenticeship as a way of feeding new talent into the business.
This led to Rebecca sourcing a specific Project Management trainer, Steve Iddon (PM and Apprentice programme development specialist) to develop, design and implement programmes according to our needs (including PFQ, PMQ, Risk 1 & 2 and Level 4 Associate Project Manager Apprenticeship standard).
Immediately Steve understood what I was after, picked up the ball and ran with it. He did some research across the company on the type and effectiveness of training that had been provided previously, and contacted the Association for Project Management to ensure that long term we could get our training accredited by them. Steve designed the courses, produced all of the material and between him and Beccy took over the advertising and admin of all aspects which took a load off my plate!
Once the courses started, Steve was very receptive to feedback from both myself and the course delegates, changing things along the way to provide maximum benefit to the business. The long-term result was that the feedback and pass rates on all courses was consistently high with many people progressing on to further courses, and our first app Apprenticeship completed with a Merit recently.
I would have no hesitation in recommending Steve and Rebecca to anyone looking for work-related learning solutions that add value to the organisation.