Skills for Business initiative established
Phase One of the Skills for Business programme is now complete. De Montfort University selected Optima Training to help establish their programme. Mark has been providing interim project management services to DMU on an exclusive basis since February. He has been working on the processes, mechanisms and delivery teams needed to ensure the success of Skills for Business.
Skills for Business
The Skills for Business initiative will make a range of services available to small and medium businesses in the region. At the heart of Skills for Business is a new University Certificate in Professional Development (UCPD). It allows you to benefit from higher level education whilst remaining in full-time employment.
Project milestone
A key milestone for the initial project phase was to achieve validation of the UCPD. This will enable courses to be tailored to the needs of business by combining learning units within a pre-validated shell. The process of validation is essentially the quality assurance mechanism for Higher Education courses. The ability for employers to select and combine units from a pre-validated framework greatly increases responsiveness.
Validation of the framework was achieved successfully in September. Since then, Mark has been helping to select the project team to take this initiative forward.
Professor Stephen Baskerville, Pro Vice Chancellor, said that Mark had played “an important role in bringing together the disparate parts of the University involved in an undertaking of this size” and that he “certainly contributed to its success”. Professor Baskerville also commented that it was “refreshing to see a professional consultant become so emotionally invested in the project.”
Project handover for Phase Two
Mark worked closely with the new Project Manager, Kerry Wright, during the last months of his own involvement to ensure a smooth handover.
For more information about Skills for Business, contact Kerry Wright on 0116 207 8940