News Updates
Thousand of training places created at new centre - Posted 26th January 2005.
A new £200,000 training centre designed to help plug the skills gap in utilities industries across the North and beyond officially opened its doors in Howdon on Tyneside on Friday 26 November.The Howdon Utilities Training Centre which will employ more than a dozen full and part-time staff, will offer more than a hundred different training courses both for people seeking to join the utility industries or existing employees needing to update their skills. Based on a former Transco depot site, it is the fourth training centre to be opened by Lomax Training Services Limited, which started life on Wearside just over three years ago with just four employees.
It has since grown to 28 staff and grown its turnover from £170,000 a year to an expected million this year. The company's rapid expansion has been possible thanks to a dedicated staff who have developed both standard and bespoke courses to suit the needs of their clients - 95% of whom return with repeat business.
Lomax has a wide client base including national and regional utility companies, local authorities, small local firms and individuals and also works closely with colleges in the region. Managing Director Jim Lomax said the company has faced some exciting and challenging times:
"The opening of the new centre is a major milestone for us all - and we believe we can now offer some of the best facilities in the country to train and retrain people working for the utilities," he said. "We have a great team here and it's their hard work and the vision of the management team that has helped us come so far so quickly. But it has been our clients who have returned to us time and again that have been the main reason for our success and we look forward to serving them even better."
The new centre was officially opened by Ruth Thompson OBE, Group Corporate Affairs Director for National Grid Transco.
Background information
Founded by Jim Lomax, Lomax Training Services (LTS) was created to provide hundreds of trained people to fill the growing gap in the gas industry for gas service engineers and to provide a centre in the North of England to meet the need for refresher training and assessment for thousands more.
It has done so by creating a team to deliver bespoke energy industry technical training across domestic and commercial/industrial sectors whilst branching into gas engineering and other utility work. It also delivers Government training programmes and supervisory and management training.
With a headquarters based at the Business and Innovation Centre at Wearfield in Sunderland, Lomax has four training centres offering a wider range of utility and related training:
1. Swan Street, Southwick
2. Leechmere, Leechmere Industrial Estate
3. Southwick Industrial Estate
4. Howdon, just off the A19 near the Tyne Tunnel Whilst the company is based in the North East where there is a considerable demand for its services - the client base is local, regional and national:
1. National utilities including National Grid Transco, British Gas and Advantica 2. Government through the employment agency 3. Energy and Utilities Skills Ltd 4. Enterprise plc - major utility company in the North East 5. Housing organisations like Sunderland Housing 6. Large and small utility contracting companies 7. Individuals seeking new career paths and seeking retraining 8. Unemployed people who are seeking to join or rejoin the workforce 9. Young people undertaking Modern Apprenticeship courses Clear identification of its market and comprehensive partnership working has delivered expediential growth and a commitment to quality with amazing results for Lomax. The increasing gap in the gas industry for trained service engineers due to people leaving the industry or retiring was the niche business. The fragmentation of the gas industry through the 1990s in particular resulted in a considerable reduction in training capacity:
The company has increased employ numbers from 5 to 28 in two years and sales several fold to £700K a year - a £1 million turnover is predicted for the current year.
The company's success has also been recognised with a series of awards including Investors in People (IIP) and UKAS Quality Management Awards, the IIP Silver Award for Excellence in Training won January 2004 and a Regional Training Award in October.Return to Top of page