OPENREACH Ltd. – Service Delivery – Advanced Engineer Career Pathways

OPENREACH Ltd. – Service Delivery – Advanced Engineer Career Pathways

The CWU Openreach National Team (NT) has been working with the company to update and enhance the career pathways available for members in Service Delivery.  We have now agreed a new approach which adds additional options for individuals to attain Advanced Engineer status and therefore obtain the (TMNE2 upper) paypoint of £28,911 and 10% OTB.  The agreed plan will see circa 3100 members upskilled in the next two years.

This will enable members to gain core and enhanced skills in the different business units, i.e. UK Operations, Network Engineering Design and Fibre to the Premise.  The specific details associated with this new approach are set out in the attached letter and slides.

The health and safety training module (which is completed as a precursor to the advanced engineering skills modules) has now been added to the training package completed in the first few weeks of employment as a trainee engineer. Members who completed the health and safety training during their traineeship will receive the pay uplift at the point at which they complete one of the advanced skills qualifying courses and this will be effective from the start date of the course (or first qualifying module for combined complex cabling and jointing). Engineers who did not complete the health and safety training during their traineeship will receive the pay uplift backdated to the start of the health and safety course, following the completion of the final course on the pathway (in line with the existing agreement).

Any advanced engineer training which is cancelled (due to operational constraints) will be rescheduled into the following quarter.  Previously, on average, it could take an engineer up to 3 years to progress to an advanced engineer.

Openreach will track and share metrics of the number of engineers achieving advance status and timeframes with the CWU.  It will be crucial in the weeks and months ahead that this is monitored at all levels with the company, i.e. overall view nationally with the NT and at Regional/SAM level with the relevant Regional Co-ordinators and Branches.

This is a major achievement for the CWU on behalf of its members and the NT believes it will be welcomed by all those impacted.

Any enquiries from Branches regarding this LTB should be referred to my office in the first instance.

Yours sincerely,

Dave Bowman

Assistant Secretary  

LTB 503/21 PDF
LTB 503/ 21 – Service Delivery – Advanced Engineer Career Pathways
LTB 503/21 – Appendix 1

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