Retrofit Skills Mini-Competition under the GMCA Education Work and Skills FPS

Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) looked to procure a lead organisation to deliver the reskilling/upskilling element of a Retrofit Skills Hub which forms part of the commissioned provision element of the wider Skills for Growth programme.A key aspect of reaching Greater Manchester (GM)’s carbon neutral targets is the retrofitting of buildings.

It has been estimated that for GM to reach targets, 60,000 homes need to be retrofitted annually. The market for retrofit homes is growing from both private and public funding and this brings with it a need for new skills within our construction industry.

This specification is part of a longer-term plan to develop skills to deliver retrofit as the market increases, background slides which show the need to deliver skills for our green Economy in GM can be found in Annex 7.

Therefore, this specification aims to pilot retrofit training models which, if successful, we would look to upscale to deliver at a larger scale. This specification will not be the totality of provision procured in this sector, it instead focus’ on specific skills needs that have been identified at present.

As this specification set out, we are commissioning up to £1.1m to create a Retrofit Skills Hub. This will deliver 3 training strands to upskill a minimum of 1140 individuals with new retrofit competencies and roles. There will be 3 training strands:

• Training Strand 1: Pathway to Retrofit – Upskilling of occupations
• Training Strand 2: Retrofit support for business owners
• Training strand 3: Retrofit CPD to support construction skills providers

This opportunity was commissioned as a further competition/call off from the education, work and skills flexible procurement system.