Lavender unveils new training partnership with Skills Training UK

Lavender International NDT has announced its backing of the Government’s Year of Engineering, as it continues to raise awareness of engineering, and specifically NDT, to young people by providing hands-on demonstrations to local schools and colleges.

Lavender International specialises in non-destructive testing (NDT) training, examination and consultancy services, and was originally founded in Sheffield in 1976. It now offers training and support programmes across the world from international locations such as the USA, Greece, South Africa, Canada and Abu Dhabi.

Lavender’s recent partnership with Skills Training UK (STUK), one of the UK’s leading training and employability providers, now allows Lavender to support the delivery of two of the NDT apprenticeship standards, by delivering approved NDT training as a subcontractor to STUK. Training could include visual testing, penetrant testing, magnetic testing, weld inspector, ultrasonic testing, radiography testing, phased array, and time of flight diffraction.

This new partnership supports the government’s pledge to encourage young people to take a closer look at engineering as a career choice. The NDT operator apprenticeship and NDT engineering apprenticeship have been developed to ensure that apprentices are trained to the highest standards and become rounded technicians with the hope that it will fulfil the skills shortage gap within the industry.

Lavender has made the decision to become employee-owned in 2015. With every team member now a co-owner of the business, they are equally motivated to ensure the success of the company, with the employee ownership day taking place in June at a later date.

Managing director Tim Armitt said: “As an NDT training company, our belief in the power of people and our commitment to securing the success of both our team and the people we train is at the heart of everything we do. Our recent partnership with STUK, who are the only organisation to twice achieve the ‘excellent’ score in the Merlin Standard Accreditation, means we’re able to work alongside an organisation who align themselves so naturally with our own core values of quality, flexibility and trust, and who are equally as passionate about delivering the highest possible quality levels of training to all apprentices.

“We’re really excited to be working with STUK to deliver training of these standards to our apprentices. We look forward to helping to grow the next generation of NDT technicians and introducing more people to the fantastic world of engineering – especially during the government’s Year of Engineering.”

Lavender International NDT www.lavender-ndt.com