NEW Scottish Plant Owners Association (SPOA) president John Sibbald is aiming to keep the momentum going at the trade association, following a number of significant changes in recent years.
John, whose day job is director of West Lothian-based Sibbald Training, told Project Plant the areas he’s keen to focus on include attracting fresh talent into the sector and helping members navigate an array of challenges including training and increasingly stringent environmental considerations.
John paid tribute to the ‘amazing job’ carried out by his predecessor Callum Mackintosh in helping to modernise the SPOA and drive through changes including the implementation of a new management system to boost communication with members, the delivery of more meaningful events, and the investment in dedicated offices in Stirling.
The Stirling base has provided a place for members to drop in and speak to membership administrator Vicky Park, as well as meeting space and hot desk facilities. It is also the home of the recently purchased Tenstar simulator, described as most substantial investment made by the association in many years and a focal point in the organisation’s plans to help attract new operators and upskill existing ones.
“With all the changes that have been made, we need to take a step back, embrace them and focus on demonstrating the benefits,” John explained. “Probably a hot topic with members just now is around subs fees going up again this year. To allow the association to succeed, grow, and offer better value to our members, we’ve had to look at a three-year tier of increases.
“The reason we’ve put them in a three-year tier is to show that we can actually give value for money. The first increase last year allowed us to take on facilities. We’ve now got a full-time member of staff and a simulator that can go out to events. Members can see where the money has gone. We can’t just increase subs and then give them exactly the same.”
Like many industries, the plant sector is grappling with stifling skills shortages. John agrees that construction continues to have an image problem – particularly within schools.
The new Tenstar simulator, complete with a motion base for real-life seat feel and a VR headset, is tipped to be a game-changer when it appears at careers events and trade shows around the country. The simulator can provide safe and practical training on machines including excavators, telehandlers, mobile cranes, wheel loaders, ADTs, and graders.
John revealed there have been two plant simulators in Scotland for several years – one owned by AMD Contracts, the Borders-based plant business run by former SPOA president Fraser Dykes, and the other owned by Sibbald Training.
“On the industry side of things, careers engagement is where we really need to focus,” he added. “The simulator is a big part of that. We’ll be engaging with members to get the simulator out to local careers events. Young people love the simulator and you can sometimes identify talent quite early on as well.
“Like every industry at the moment, we’re not getting enough people coming in. There’s more going out that end than there is coming in at the front end and it is a real challenge. How do we tackle that? It just has to be driven through engagement and awareness. There’s lot of industries out there when it comes to tech that look a lot more appealing from the outside, but there are great careers within our sector. There’s lots of good stories. We’ve been doing videos recently on apprentices which is allowing us to show the career opportunities within our sector.
“A big challenge is there’s probably not enough engagement at school level. I see some of the rates machine operators can be on and you can have a very successful career in the plant industry. You can start off as a plant operator or mechanic and that can lead on to hire controllers, plant managers, workshop managers. There are progression opportunities. We need to show what the opportunities are and hopefully that will generate interest.”
John told how the SPOA has ramped up its apprenticeship engagement in recent years. Both he and Callum Mackintosh have made numerous trips to the CITB’s Bircham Newton construction college to meet with young people and discuss some of the challenges they face. Those dealings have led to extra support for the CITB’s Scottish site in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire.
The trade body is also planning more engagement with women to highlight that the sector is open to everyone.
Another potential solution to skills shortages could be workers transitioning from other sectors. John said a ‘natural fit’ when it comes to transferrable skills would be individuals with experience in the oil and gas sector, particularly those who have been operating machinery and working in roles such as mechanics and fitters. Those with an agricultural background are also likely to succeed. Regardless of a person’s experience or background, John stressed the importance of contractors showing patience with novice operators.
He explained that while training companies will ensure operators are safe and can operate machines to a certain standard to meet test criteria, an issue which sometimes crops up on site is that contractors insist on more experienced workers who can deliver higher outputs.
“I hear it often that contractors put guys off jobs who are a bit slower,” John explained. “But how can they gain experience? It’s a catch-22. We have to educate the contractors around making sure that they allow red card operators on sites to gain that experience.”
John will be assisted in his two-year tenure by newly elected vice president David Jarvie, MD of hire specialist Jarvie Plant. Coming from a training background, rather than a plant hire one, John admits he is somewhat ‘bucking the trend’ for SPOA presidents. This, he argues, is a positive as it means he can bring a different perspective to the role.
“Although our family started within plant hire 50 years ago, my day-to-day job is training,” he stated. “I do believe we should be mixing the type of person who does the presidency. It’s a two-year tenure so it’s not a long time; it passes very quickly. I think getting more diverse people in the chair will help the association evolve and tackle different challenges.”
One of the things John is already working on is providing more CPD (continuous professional development) opportunities for members. In his role at Sibbald, he has worked with the likes of CECA (Civil Engineering Contractors Association) and the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) on organising safety, health, and awareness days. He wants to extend this to SPOA members, with the first event potentially taking place sometime in 2024.
While the SPOA was founded more than 70 years ago, the role of trade bodies has never been more important. In recent years, the organisation has provided essential support and guidance on topics such as the pandemic, evolving safety legislation, and decarbonisation.
John highlighted the leadership role the SPOA played last year in providing clarity around the removal of the red diesel subsidy and what this meant for members and the plant sector as a whole.
“We need members as much as members need us,” he said. “We need the right people so we can go to government and training bodies and engage with them.
“I’m sure there’s going to be lots more challenges coming up. We can see a little bit of a slowdown in industry just now and we need to be there for our members and ask what challenges they’re facing on a day-to-day basis and how we can support and lobby for them. If we’re not there to help represent our industry, who is?
“We have different challenges in Scotland compared with down south and it’s really important that people recognise that. If you’re working within Scotland, the SPOA is here to represent you.
“Because we’ve got such a large membership, we’ve been trying to pull and collate a lot of information from members. By doing that, we’ve now got a lot more detail about who we represent. We know how many apprentices go through our members. We know how many people are employed in our sector through our members. We also want members to know that they can come to us with challenges and things they may be facing within the business.
“One thing at the moment we’re doing a lot of is subsidised training courses such as hire controller training. We want to give our members as much knowledge as they can to help them succeed within the sector because we need the sector to succeed.”
