Project Control National Occupational Standards and NVQ

Mike,

Thanks for inviting me to look at your Accreditation Through Experience Thread.

Your thoughts and those that follow from Charlestron and Chris on the thread are all interesting and along the right lines.

This PEO suggestion of a thesis is similar to the "Certified Cost Engineer" route within ACostE

Years of experience is an interesting subject. Whilst guidelines such as those you have suggested are useful, there will be different opinions.

The ACostE stance is that Determination of what constitutes a sufficient number of years experience will be at the discretion of the Certification Board and would be unlikely to be less than four years. The following activities are examples of eligible experience, but are not exhaustive.
a. Continuous employment in a cost engineering position requiring the direct application of the principles and practice of cost engineering.
b. Regular employment or direct supervision in the instruction of the techniques of cost engineering.
c. Regular employment in the management or supervision of a cost engineering function.
d. Self-employment as a cost engineering consultant.

More on the following link :

http://www.acoste.org.uk/content_R.php?page_id=335&
(you will need to scroll down)

I will some comments to your thread.

Mike



Regarding timescale, I have a couple of senior practitioners who completed Level 4 in 9 months and as this is a vocational qualification this means they continued to do their normal "day job" and just needed to find a relaticvely small number of hours a week to compile evidence + attend periodic assessment visits of 1-2 hours.



It’s not the same for eveyone, but typical candidates would need to spend about 4 hours a week on this on top of their "day job"



The costs will vary depending on the assessment centre. There are currently at least two in the UK as you will have discovered.



The costs you mention are indicative and based on someone only taking one level. However, a significant part of the cost of the NVQ’s is for candidate registration etc. at the start.



So for example, a candidate who moves straight from Level 2 (say £2300) to Level 3 (say 2500) might not necessarily pay the full £4800.



Obviously this website is not the place to discuss the commercial in detail but ACostE, ProVoc and the Assssment Centres can advise/help.



Also, for individuls who want to take the NVQ but work Ltd Company or Contract, I believe grants may be available as a contribution, from the ECITB (subject to availability of regional funding)



Visit the following ECITB website and click on CONTACTS to identify your regional office



http://www.ecitb.org.uk/



Before doing so you may also be interested in viewing the ECITB video on careers in project controls if your work involves bringing new entrants into the profession.