Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
The Builders Merchants Federation has been working with training organisation Skills for Logistics to develop a new qualification.
The qualification, called at the moment, the Qualification in Wholesale Distribution, brings together elements from a number of industries that all have a wholesaling element.
BMF managing director Chris Pateman says that the problem for merchants of many existing construction industry-led qualifications is that they focus mainly on the building element of the industry. “Other industries, such as the motor sector or large retail supermarkets all have elements in common with builders and plumbers merchants – how they deal with returns, for example, or how they deal with suppliers’ lorries.”
The idea is that, by working together with different but complementary industries, a new qualification can be developed that deals with the very specific issues that builders and plumbers merchants face.
“Merchants also have problems that other industries don’t face,” Pateman says. “For example, having suppliers’ lorries delivery to the same site as customers’ vans are collecting from, often at the same time. And returning, say, a clutch to a motor dealership is a different problem to returning a wrongly-sized radiator to the manufacturer.”
BMF and Skills for Logistics would like to hear from any merchants who would like to contribute their ideas on the development of the qualification.
To see a PDF copy of the draft consultation, click here.
Ideas to chris.pateman@bmf.org.uk by Christmas please.
