CALLAN: While renewables are undoubtedly becoming increasingly popular,high efficiency boilers are still important for installers, as analysis of leading boiler and renewable manufacturer Vokèra's 2010 training courses highlights.
A record number of installers have attended the in-house courses offered by the manufacturer this year, with more than 1100 participants in total. The most popular course was high efficiency, with 496 attendees, followed by fault finding, which attracted 329 installers.
Feedback completed following each course shows that most attendees are sole trader installers (44% of total) and another 36% work in small companies of between two and five people.
Cited by nine out of 10 attendees (93%) the biggest reason for attending training is to update their knowledge, as opposed to being a company or legislative requirement.
Eleanor Fox, marketing director at Vokèra, commented: "We run our courses to help our installers get to grips with new technologies, while improving their knowledge and skill set. It is therefore very rewarding to see so many attendees this year, and we hope that our training programme in 2011 proves as popular.
"Of the 1110 installers that attended a Vokèra training course, 11% came to a renewables course. With the various government schemes coming into operation in 2011, such as the Renewable Heat Incentive, we are expecting to see an increase in numbers to our solar thermal and air source heat pump courses.
Our renewable overview course has been very well received and we will be running this throughout next year at various locations."
