EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, April 2, 2007 -- Winners of the Business Skills Awards for the Water Industry 2007 were announced on Friday 30 March at the annual Institution of Water Officers (IWO) President's Dinner, where Energy & Utility Skills (EU Skills) Chief Executive was instated as President.
The Awards were presented by David Hellier, Water Strategy Manager at EU Skills, the Sector Skills Council for the electricity, gas, waste management and water industries.
Making the presentations, Hellier outlined the aims of the EU Skills Business Skills Awards to be recognition of initiatives which have significantly contributed to an improvement in business skills, for example projects which include resourcing, restructuring, upskilling, productivity drives, innovation and introduction of new technologies.
The EU Skills Business Skills Award 2007, sponsored by Develop, was given to Scottish Water with United Utilities a close runner up.
Scottish Water was awarded the title, for developing a skills project to allow Scottish Water to adopt a corporate approach to identifying, measuring and analyzing the supply and demand of technical/ professional skills in Scottish Water. The project was launched with the objective 'To develop a process for identifying current and future skills requirement of Scottish Water and reviewing these against the skills currently available in the workforce. Since the project started, 202 staff involved in water treatment now have development plans focusing on the delivery of technical skills and, most importantly, skills management is now firmly on the agenda at Scottish Water.
The EU Skills Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Award, sponsored by IWO, was won by Stephen Smyth of Water Service Northern Ireland. Smyth clearly demonstrated a full understanding of what CPD is all about. His submission was well-structured and covered everything expected by the judging panel.
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