The BIFIS Fitted Interiors Skills Hub – what you need to know

Installer’s Stuart Duff sat down with Damian Walters, CEO of The British Institute of Fitted Interiors Specialists (BIFIS), to get the lowdown on how the Fitted Interiors Skills Hub is supporting the industry now and in the future.

What is the BIFIS Fitted Interior Skills Hub, and how does the industry access it?
I’ve been involved in industry for the best part of 30 years now, and training and development has been a constant requirement. But I guess one of the frustrations that I’ve seen is that it’s so fragmented. Learning and development can be found in a number of ways. The real foundation of the Skills Hub is to draw all of that together and bring it to a place where the entire industry can access as many of those learning and development opportunities as possible.

In terms of where you find the Skills Hub, its housed within the recently relaunched BIFIS app, which is available via your App Store. Search for Official BIFIS – it’s free to download, and accessible for the entire industry, and beyond. It’s available to schools, students, and a whole bunch of people. Within the app, there’s lots of functionality, and the Fitted Interior Skills Hub sits quite literally at the centre of that.

Is it designed for all disciplines and levels of competence and experience within the industry?
The app is, and the content within it will grow over time. The content is very specific to installations now, but over time we’ll include much wider areas of the industry, including design, and manufacturing. So, it’s not exclusive to installation, but it’s certainly installation centric as it stands.

How is the content generated?
We rely on the industry to contribute to the content of FI Skills Hub. We invite businesses to submit details of their learning and development opportunities, whether that’s in-person training, online training or a hybrid. There is a simple online form to complete, capturing the information in relation to that training and development activity, costs if there are any, and how people can access it. Essentially the Skills Hub becomes the vehicle to signpost to that training and development. BIFIS are not selling it, we’re not promoting it on behalf of anyone, we have literally created a central conduit to drive people to whatever training and development exists within the industry. It’s a very collaborative piece.

How does it fit in with your wider plans to support the installation community?
BIFIS has four core pillars that we work to, with one of them being Skills. Our approach on skills is divided into three key areas of focus.

The first area is focused around schools and apprenticeships. This is where we’re outreaching into schools and where we’re promoting and supporting the industry to adopt apprenticeships. And that’s obviously for future generations of the workforce, a real driver to fill the skills gap in the medium to long term.

The second area that we concentrate on is Continuing Professional Development. And that really is where the Skills Hub comes into its own because that’s the place where that content is hosted.

Last but not least is retraining. And retraining is where we work with other industries to deliver a shorter-term solution to the skills shortage by attracting people with transferable skills into the sector. An example of that would be the work that we do with the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces community, whereby we help take some of that really valuable experience and qualification that is relevant to our industry, and we provide a vehicle to bring those ex-service personnel and their families into our industry at great pace.

The Skills Hub can support all three areas of the work that we do on skills generally. If you go onto the Skills Hub, you will see that we split it into those three areas.

Do you think armed forces personnel offer a route to tackling the lack of skilled people?
I have an affinity for the armed forces, from a personal and family perspective, but it is also a real opportunity for the industry to tap into what is unarguably a disciplined, trained workforce. One of the misconceptions around working with armed forces personnel is that they’re very limited in terms of their qualifications and their experience. That’s not the case. There are lots of people that leave the armed forces who not only have transferable skills from a discipline point of view and also from a practical point of view. If you look at the Royal Engineers or the Royal Logistics Corps, they’re essentially full of tradespeople. They plied their trade in green or blue, but with some tailored support in helping them to convert that qualification and experience, they can easily slot into the fitted interiors market. So, it’s a bit of a no-brainer, really. Beyond that, it’s not just the armed forces personnel themselves. One of the things that we do that is rarely spoken about in other industries is engage their families, because this is a whole group of people that have followed their loved ones around the world, in some instances, and certainly around the country. They also have potential skills to support our industry, not just from an installation point of view, but from a design, retail, logistics or manufacturing point of view. The pipeline of personnel that can support our industry will fill some of those skills gaps.

InstallerSHOW is partnering with the FI Skills Hub through its InstallerFUTURES initiative.

Are you looking for partners from the wider industry to help support, and how can people can get involved?
The simple answer is yes. As an institute, we are heavily reliant on collaboration. We are underfunded from government. We are under-supported in some respects. And therefore, the stakeholders that we work with are pivotal to the work that we do. There are several ways in which people can get involved.

There’s light touch support whereby businesses can become official supporters. I would ask them and drive them to the BIFIS website (bifis.org) to find out how they can do that, but that’s essentially where they contribute a small amount of money into the pot to help BIFIS to deliver against our strategic objectives, including our work on skills. There are other opportunities, of course, to contribute to the training and development material that is on that Skills Hub. So, if you’re a supplier, a distributor, a manufacturer, a retailer, a college, whatever you may be, however spurious you feel that the connection to installers may be, get in contact with us, let us be the judge. Beyond that, there’s hands-on support, including the BIFIS Schools Engagement Programme.

How does the Schools Engagement Programme work?
The Schools Engagement Programme is really exciting because it’s our industry’s opportunity to reach out meaningfully and directly to the next generation. The pilot begins later this month in the South East of England, with BIFIS going in to schools with a view to creating a blueprint to enable our industry to engage schools across the country. The one thing that we’re doing differently is that this is a prolonged activity, not a short-term initiative.

In a nutshell, we’ll be following students from Year Six, essentially the last year in primary education, and we’ll continue to engage, nurture and develop the same cohort of kids throughout their secondary education. To begin with, in Year Six, it will be all of them, but as the years progress and they move towards GCSEs and start to understand what they want to do with their lives, that cohort will reduce down into a group of people that are well informed about the career potential of our sector and understand the opportunities and the pathways in to the fitted interiors industry at a key time – when they’re at the point of deciding their career options.

If you’re a supplier, distributor, manufacturer or retailer that wants to talk to these people, then talk to BIFIS because we’re the conduit for that, whether that’s supporting us now with sharing the message, whether that’s giveaways, whether that’s light touch information or us taking kids into your professional environment to help spark their interest in our industry. Down the line, that could evolve into work experience placements for these kids in your environment, and beyond that, potentially creating apprenticeship opportunities for these kids who are at the point of leaving secondary school and going into college environment.

We want to take these kids through the journey, and we absolutely rely on the industry to support it at every level.

Any final thoughts?
Whoever you are, whether you want to contribute materials, content, whatever it is, or even if you’re just curious as to the opportunities that are available to you, please download the app, start looking, and share it. Talk to people about it. If you’ve got social media, share it, because this is a really good, free-to-use, free-to-list tool that is available to the whole industry.

It’s not ours, BIFIS doesn’t own it, we’re the custodians of this platform, we’re the ones that have brought it to life, but it’s yours, so please use it, please get involved in it, and get behind it, however that may be.

Find out more at bifis.org