Marine training the Kiwi way

The New Zealand marine industry is respected internationally for its high calibre exports and the huge contribution it makes to our high-profile yachting successes.

But marine exports are no longer the domain of individual companies or consortiums producing racing yachts, luxury yachts, motoryachts, products or consulting services. The industry's national training organisation, the Boating Industry Training Organisation (BITO), a division of the Marine Industry Association of New Zealand, has become an exporter by licensing its apprenticeship training system overseas.

The Nova Scotia Boatbuilders Association will use six of BITO's unit standard training modules and study notes to provide the Canadian province's first boatbuilding qualifications.

The on-the-job training system was developed in New Zealand in the mid-1990s and study notes prepared by marine industry experts were introduced to the local industry in 1998. Since then they have been progressively updated and refined, and new unit standards produced.

The BITO now has 12 unit standards covering the industry, from boatbuilding, cabinet-making, engineering, painting, sparmaking, rigging and electronics, to retail sales and boat brokerage.

The modules are competency-based and apprentices are required to work through and master a structured programme of skills to achieve their National Certificate qualification.

The Nova Scotia Boatbuilders Association, faced with creating its own training resource, has taken up the composite, wooden, alloy and steel boatbuilding modules, plus the marine cabinet making and marine systems engineering modules.

The association first approached the BITO in 1999 after Team New Zealand's America's Cup success highlighted our industry's exceptional skills.

BITO declined that request and others because the training resource needed further development, but signed in April this year after a Nova Scotia delegation visited in 2004.

The delegation included representatives from the boatbuilders' association, Department of Education and Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and they spent a week in Auckland examining the training system and talking with apprentices at work.

Tim Edwards, executive director of the Nova Scotia Boatbuilders Association, says their four-year agreement provides a full suite of unit standards that have shaved years off their development programme.

"The industry has received a huge shot in the arm and our boatbuilders have responded very positively. They are pleased to be associated with New Zealand." Robert Brooke, BITO's general manager, oversaw the introduction of the National Certificate training system to Nova Scotia. He says BITO's governing board deliberated at length if it was endangering a competitive advantage by selling the training system.

"The negotiations took place over a number of years and we entered into a tightly controlled pilot programme. The Nova Scotian industry is very different to our own and there is no conflict," he says.

Edwards confirmed his provincial industry, which employs around 1500 employees and has annual sales of C$100 million ($113.3 million), does not compete with the New Zealand industry. It concentrates on building robust displacement powerboats designed for North Atlantic conditions, with commercial fishing boats making up two thirds of production, and pleasure craft accounting for the balance.

The strong reliance on the fishing industry was the reason a Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries representative came to New Zealand with the delegation.

"Future growth is expected to come out of the custom and semi-production displacement cruiser markets in Canada and the US," Edwards says.

The BITO will reinvest Nova Scotia's annual licensing fees and BITO's chairman, Ian Cook, says the agreement is a win-win for both parties. "It will enable us to invest in further training fields outside the current curriculum."

The BITO has 517 modern apprentices on its books, arguably the highest boatbuilding training rate per capita in the world. Around 80 apprentices have signed on during the past three months and the system has reached equilibrium, with the number of new apprentices entering the programme generally balancing the number graduating.

The success of the BITO training programme is reflected in the ease with which New Zealand-trained boatbuilders obtain jobs overseas, and the high regard the international maritime community has for the New Zealand industry.

Marine exports are expected to grow to $1.5 billion by 2015, and revenues from licensing BITO's world class training programme will contribute to this figure.