Apprentice installers battled it out against time – and each other – to compete in the Apprentice Skills Challenge Competition, held at IFSEC 2007.
A total of 29 pairs of apprentices entered the contest over the four days of the exhibition in May of this year. Sponsored by BT Redcare in association with national skills and standards setting body Skills for Security, the Security Systems and Alarms Inspection Board (SSAIB) and the National Security Inspectorate (NSI), the contest required the apprentices to:
– take a short written test covering the European Standards;
– take over a previously installed intruder alarm system;
– determine two faults which had been placed into the system;
– install extra detecting equipment;
– connect the working system to the dedicated BT Redcare monitoring station.
Each pair of apprentices had a set time limit of one-and-a-half hours to complete the task, or reach the furthest stage that they could. At the end of the time period, the work was then judged by the NSI and SSAIB inspectors who said that the “quality of work from all the apprentices who participated was excellent”.
Overall winners were Sean Walker of ASG Midland (Security Systems) and Blair Howarth of Clear Sound Alarms Ltd.