Rigging has, unfortunately always had a lower priority than Scaffolding in the work of SRIIT. Not because we think anything less of Rigging or see it as less important, but for two main reasons.
- To work as an in charge Scaffolder in New Zealand you must hold a Certificate of Competence; and as the only way a new Scaffolder can get a Certificate of Competence is to hold a National Certificate in scaffolding any blockage in the Scaffolding system would have serious consequences.
- Under current New Zealand legislation no certification of any sort is required to work as a rigger and because of this the take up rate for Rigging training is quite low and the consequences of any blockage in the system are minimal.
However, since we started operating under the authority of Opportunity Training historic blockages in Scaffolding are cleared and the programme to modernise the units and qualifications is well under way and on track.
This allows us to concentrate on the Rigging units and qualifications. Just as in Scaffolding, the original units are hugely complex and very hard to assess properly. Much of the content of current units is retained, but broken down into much smaller and more manageable unit standards.
Again like scaffolding, rather than have one National Certificate with three strands, there will be separate National Certificates and rather than the ability to enter at any level as now, entry will be at the bottom and entry into a higher level qualification will only be allowed after gaining the lower level National Certificate.
Work has just begun in the last couple of months on the Rigging revue so any thoughts are welcome.
The future strategic direction of Rigging training can be seen here
