On Wednesday 10th February 2021, Tim Kelly (Kelly Group Chairman) and the Kelly Group leadership team hosted a COVID secure meeting, welcoming Openreach to their new national training centre in North London.
With snow still melting from the weekend’s blizzard, Clive Selley (Openreach CEO), Kevin Murphy (Openreach Managing Director of Fibre and Network Delivery), Olly Kunc (Openreach Managing Director for Service Delivery) and Ian Lawrence (Openreach Director of Network Investment and Engineering), were welcomed.
The objective of this visit was for Kelly Group to share their recruitment and training ramp up plans and for the leadership teams of Openreach and Kelly Group to discuss the challenges faced in upskilling the workforce to provide Full Fibre to UK homes in order to deliver the vision of a gigabit Britain.
Openreach recently announced that they are bucking the economic trend by creating 5300 new UK based engineering jobs to be filled during 2021 with the company mantra to ‘build back better’.
Kelly Group are proud to be supporting this initiative with significant additional investment in training facilities and training as well as a comprehensive recruitment campaign.
Tim Kelly, Kelly Group Chairman said:
“Given the significant group investment in training facilities and a timely Openreach announcement regarding increased national recruitment, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to invite the senior Openreach leadership team to our new North London national training centre.
Clive and his team were given a tour of our new 4.5 acre multi discipline facility. We showed our external poling, street works, traffic management training areas and internal copper and fibre practical demonstration rooms including our customer service scenario training within our mock houses.
We have a very successful longstanding partnership with Openreach spaning over 25 years. Our very first BT contract was in 1995 supporting their overhead poling network – fast forward 26 years and we’ve recently invested in a fleet of bespoke FORS Gold compliant Pole Erection Units amongst other vehicles to support national Openreach contracts.
I personally would like to thank Clive and his team for their time and look forward to strengthening our partnership over the next 25 years.”
Ensuring the next generation of engineers are set up for success in their new career, Kelly Group coaches and develops trainees from their 4 multi discipline nationwide training centres, in Glasgow, St Helens, Nuneaton and London.
With over 50+ training programs covered, their bespoke approach to training by full time in house trainers ensures each operative has the skills and knowledge to maintain the group’s reputation in delivering a first class service for their partners and their customers.
Kelly Group’s nationwide training facilities include:
- SQA approved streetworks operative and supervisor units
- SMART awards approved centre delivering overhead safety, underground safety & conductive concrete
- Copper & Fibre Installation training courses
- Fibre network build
- Tetra working at heights approved centre
Kevin Murphy, Openreach Managing Director of Fibre and Network Delivery said:
“As a major employer and infrastructure builder, we believe Openreach can play a leading role in helping the UK to build back better. Our Full Fibre network build is going faster than ever and we have just passed 4.5m homes and business.
We’re also investing in our supply chain, and this visit to the new Kelly Group training centre shows us the intent this partner has to recruit and upskill its talent and to join us on the journey to digitally upgrade the UK.”
Kelly Group opened the first phase of their new 4.5 acre site located at 1 Jeffreys Rd, Brimsdown, Enfield EN3 7PN in September 2019.
Clive Selley opened the final phase, which includes a newly built open planned training facility, increasing the capacity by 100 + students, during his visit on the 10th February.
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