The City &Guilds units have been the only utility arb certification our industry has had since around 1999. Our industry stakeholders are familiar with the units but should be aware other options are also available now.

It is often the case that people do not realise that C&G are only involved in the final assessments and do not approve instructors or manage the associated training. 

IC&G now only recognise their own awards as prerequisite units for higher level UA awards.

Lantra have agreed to enable operators to use any awards as prerequisites.

We can deliver the training and the assessments for all the C&G units.

The UAG and Arb Association approved contractor scheme is now available. As the author and lead assessor for the scheme, Martin has now put many organisations through the approval process.

 The utility scheme is designed to enable contractors to gain accreditation in all or just one of the scheme specialisms as appropriate to their contract works.

Accreditation is only given to contractors that can robustly demonstrate their compliance with industry good practice and high quality standards.

By using independent, trained auditors with an in-depth knowledge of the industry, the scheme can help demonstrate to clients the professional and proactive health, safety and environmental standards the contractor follows.

It also includes criteria specifically related to the contract standards, so in effect the scheme assessments are an additional site audit to those the client completes.

We ran the first Lantra Awards utility training course and assessments in Dec 2017. These new awards from Lantra are very similar to the familiar UA awards but have additional elements within the training. The industry now has a choice of two awarding organisations' qualifications.

It will take a little time for the industry to get used to different-looking ID cards and certificates, however all should be equally recognised with the C&G UA units as they are so similar.