For nearly 15 years the Building and Construction Industry Training Fund has collected levies from all construction projects in Western Australia and invested the money into the training of skilled labour.
For nearly 15 years the Building and Construction Industry Training Fund has collected levies from all construction projects in Western Australia and invested the money into the training of skilled labour.
For nearly 15 years the Building and Construction Industry Training Fund has collected levies from all construction projects in Western Australia and invested the money into the training of skilled labour.
This includes subsidising employers for the cost of taking on apprentices.
Since its inception the BCITF has supported the employment of nearly 20,000 apprentices and helped 100,000 industry workers to upgrade their skills.
With the industry currently dealing with a severe skills shortage, Dale Alcock is the public head of a career promotion program that targets school children, parents and careers advisers, and operating under the slogan ‘one industry, no limits’.
The program has created a careers booklet, a website and a video promoting the industry, and is undertaking a school visitation program, something in which Mr Alcock plays an active role.
The mindset among many at school, according to Mr Alcock, is that to be successful you must go to university.
“Kids are told this from their parents point of view, and ultimately most of their parents probably hate their jobs anyway,” he said.
“The issue of tertiary versus vocational is quite interesting, and the message we are trying to get across is that both are acceptable choices.
“When I talk in schools the first thing I ask is if anyone in the room knows what they want to do. If they do, I tell them to go for it; the rest of them ultimately need to find something that clicks with them, and the building and construction industry is a real option.”
Mr Alcock is also determined to reform the apprentice system to one that’s competency based, rather than a time-based system, and is highly critical of what he calls “government inaction” in relation to legislation governing trade training.
“The largest obstacles in the industry are issues of constraints beyond our control, like government legislation, and operators in the industry need to be more vocal about changing these circumstances,” he said.