The Association of Plumbing & Heating Contractors (APHC) has developed two of its one-day plumbing courses, normally delivered in person to small groups, for online delivery using webinar software.
From June, following a successful trial period, plumbers will be able to sit APHC’s Legionella Cold Water Risk Assessment & Disinfection Course and their Sanitary & Above Ground Drainage Course remotely via a desktop or laptop computer with either a built-in or externally fitted camera.
The courses are run by APHC’s technical services manager Graeme Dryden, pictured. He said: “The current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is making us rethink how we can do things in a COVID-Secure manner, and although we could continue to run our training courses at our training facility in the West Midlands by following government guidelines, we decided to trial online delivery as this would be a far safer delivery method.
“To maximise the effectiveness of how we deliver each course, we decided to run the courses over five days in two-hour segments. This has the added advantage for installers of not having to take a whole day off from trading as appointments can be scheduled around the two-hour time slots.”
Both courses can be booked via a digital booking form and the training materials are delivered electronically and can either be printed off at home or viewed on a second computer screen or via a tablet. The end assessment is carried out using Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded free of charge from the Adobe website.