My Experience of UKLA Training Courses, Paul Booth Managing Director

Joining GB Lubricants 3 years ago, at the beginning of 2016, I was instantly immersed in to a sector I had an overview of but admittedly limited detailed knowledge. Despite having worked in senior management roles across the wider Chemical and the associated manufacturing/ distribution sectors for over 20 years I had not had the need, nor opportunity, to get to know the lubricants sector in any great depth. I was lucky to have an experienced team around me and yet for myself, and my equally new Sales and Marketing Manager, it was clear a decent grounding to bring us up to speed with industry specifics was required.

Within the first year of starting we had the opportunity to attend the UKLA’s Executive Overview Course. This is a 2 day residential that gives senior managers an overview of the fundamental areas of the lubricant industry, including exploration, manufacture and marketing.  The trainer was Rod Pesch who has amassed a wealth of experience over his many years in the lubricants sector and who was very generous and patient with all manner of questions the group posed. I won’t pretend everything we learnt stuck after 2 days given it’s quite an intense overview of the sector. However, the notes we brought away and the general awareness have been invaluable as I have then carried on learning during my day to day duties.

My experience as employer using the UKLA for meeting the training needs of my team have been equally positive. During my time we have already used the comprehensive Certificate of Lubricant Competence for a new recruit in our technical team. Beth has completed the course over a 24 month period and this will give her a really great understanding of industry specifics.   It’s structured as 10, 1 day, modules, and can be done over 12 months but as a small team we needed to strike a balance between Beth’s time away from the site, travel, and her training needs.  This has proved very rewarding for all parties and we continue to look at opportunities for other members of our team as specific courses arise.

So all in all my experiences of the UKLA courses both as a delegate and for training employees have been very positive. It fulfils a need for very industry specific sector training. Plus increasingly there are also some good options for broader based topics such as waste and import/export etc… but always with a point of view from the lubricants sector which gives a much greater relevance to the topic for me and my team.