M Group Services’ Telecom Division recently hosted a telecom industry-first multi-lingual Safe Working in Civils (SA006) course at its training centre in Bristol.

The course, already developed for those with English as their first language, was delivered in Romanian, for the very first time in the industry, by Avonline Networks and the Telecom Division Training and Accreditation Team.

It was run in consultation with Smart Awards, the awarding body for the Telecoms industry, and regulated by OFQUAL and SQA, to ensure the regulated standards were achieved.

With several Romanian colleagues ready to undertake new projects and a shortage of skilled engineers across the telecom sector, Rich Hale, Managing Director of Avonline Networks and Divisional Training and Accreditation Manager Tony Ryde took the initiative in a bid to ensure consistently high standards of safety for all its specialists.

Rich said: “Congratulations to all eight people who passed this first course. We will be working to roll this training out to all our Romanian speaking colleagues and identifying other languages which we need to take into account to make working for Avonline Networks and its sister businesses in the Telecom Division as inclusive as possible.”

Tony added: “We are proud to be leading the way in offering Romanian speaking skilled workers access to the same high standards of safety training we provide all our people. The delivery of this first course is a major step forward to ensure everyone can operate safely.

Mark Turner, M Group Services’ Telecom Division Managing Director, said: “Safety will always be our number one priority. Identifying the need and creating an industry first multilingual safety in civils course highlights how passionate we are about our people and ensuring they have the skills needed to deliver to safely and to high standards for our clients.

“This will also ensure that we continue to go from strength to strength in developing our capabilities and extending our capacity to meet the needs of our clients.

“I am extremely proud of the training team for being first in the telecom industry in creating this inclusive opportunity and I congratulate the candidates who successfully completed the first course.”

Michelle Powis, Quality and Compliance Manager at Smart Awards, said: “This pilot is a crucial vehicle to connect hard-working individuals with the accreditation they deserve.”

Across M Group Services, safety is an essential core value. M Group Services