How virtual classrooms have helped a global organisation deliver IOSH training across the board

About BMT Group Ltd

BMT Group Ltd was established in 1985, from the merger of the UK's British Ship Research Association and National Maritime Institute, as an international multidisciplinary engineering, science and technology consultancy, offering services particularly in the defence and security, critical infrastructure, commercial shipping, and environment sectors.

BMT specialises in maritime engineering design, design support, risk and contract management. It employs around 1,500 professionals operating from 47 offices across four continents, with primary bases in South America, Australia, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Nicole Denny is the Global Learning and Development Manager at BMT . She explains how, when the pandemic hit, International Workplace was able to provide top-level training to the executive committee, and how this scaled across its whole operation.

Finding a health and safety training solution at the start of a pandemic

We keep our people trained on a regular basis – every two years – and it was coming up to that time just as the pandemic hit. So we had to make sure we were still doing all our due diligence as normal.

Our head of operations did a bit of research around suppliers and liked International Workplace’s offering. We started with the IOSH Safety for Executives and Directors course and then we moved to the IOSH Managing Safely and IOSH Working Safely courses as well. The goal for us was to have a certain group of people go through that training as an urgent requirement, starting with our executive committee and then moving further down the chain, right down to the boots on the ground people.

Tailored IOSH training for Executives and employees internationally

For the most part we carried out the training on Microsoft Teams, which worked great. Stacey, our facilitator, did really well with the Executive Committee – starting with the top-level team must have been a bit daunting for a new supplier, but his feedback was really great. There were times where we were still finding our feet just on the technology – Microsoft Teams wasn't playing ball from time to time – but he stayed calm under pressure and delivered what we needed. We’re really happy with the virtual delivery; I don't think we would actually go back to doing face-to-face delivery for these courses.

We have a mixed operating unit delivery, for the most part, so it’s not just people from the UK, I think we had a few from the States as well, which was really good for us. Just getting our operating units to collaborate across the globe was great, that was a real advantage.

The IOSH framework allows us to target our needs within set parameters. Depending on the audience we were able to do a deeper dive into some areas, or apply a lighter touch in others, to tailor the course so it was most relevant to the different units. We had some conversations with Stacey and Simon beforehand, looking at who was going to be on each delivery, which was a really nice touch.

Virtual Classrooms: The future for BMT Group training

Looking to the future, I think we’ll be certainly seeing the virtual deliveries continue for the time being. The IOSH training courses suit the virtual delivery quite well – it’s far easier to get people to connect to a call than is to get them into a room together, especially in a global organisation. We’re very aware of financial constraints and the sustainability targets that we're trying to hit, so this goes towards helping manage those agendas.

For the most part we’re really, really happy with the training and support Stacey and the team have given us, it’s been really flexible. You’ve given us lots of delivery options as well which is great and pretty much within our target range for what we spend on this type of training.