GGF supports Building Our Skills in Fenestration campaign

The Glass and Glazing Federation (GGF) is supporting the ‘Building Our Skills in Fenestration’ campaign recently launched by GQA Qualifications.

Like many other sectors in construction, the fenestration industry is feeling the effects of the skills gap with not enough new young people joining it. Building Our Skills in Fenestration is a campaign designed to attract the best new young talent in the many fields within fenestration, by offering industry-based qualifications and learning which will serve them for life, with mapped out career paths and visible rewards. The campaign aims to attract young people to make fenestration their career of choice.

On the GGF’s commitment to support the campaign, Shaun McAllister, GGF managing director said: “This kind of campaign is long overdue as more and more companies find it difficult to recruit young people into the glass and glazing industry. The GGF is delighted to support the campaign and urges all companies in the industry to get behind it.”

With the backing of GQA Qualifications, the fenestration and glazing industry awarding body, the new industry campaign will be launched to the public through schools, colleges, teachers, parents and other relevant forums and campaign groups from June 1.

The focus of the initiative will be to highlight the wide variety of different career paths available to young entrants, and an awareness of the qualifications they can achieve to give them learning, life-skills and ultimately career opportunities and financial rewards.

Mick Clayton CEO of GQA Qualifications, the lead promoter of the campaign, said: “The quest to recognise and develop skills within the industry has been high on the agenda of GQA for a very long time. With the industry increasingly reporting difficulties in recruiting new young people to come and join it, our focus has turned to creating a campaign to try and address the problem directly.

“The Building Our Skills in the Fenestration Industry campaign is an initiative for the whole industry to join in with and support to provide a platform to promote fenestration with a collective voice and accelerate the process of raising its profile to new entrants as a credible and exciting career choice.

“Our aim is to invite companies from all aspects of fenestration to pledge their support and promote the initiative to showcase the opportunities available to newcomers – and career changers.”

GQA has confirmed that a website and promotional material are in development to help launch the initiative and they are asking companies to become active supporters by wearing the campaign badge on their marketing material, by providing interesting video footage, images or case studies of their workforce, installations or manufacturing plants to proactively promote the campaign to as wide an audience as possible.