Closing the lighting skills gap

BRE Academy and the Institution of Lighting Professionals (ILP) are joining forces to provide built environment professionals with training that will help them to deliver and maintain best practice lighting solutions.

The first of these courses, Obtrusive Light: Navigating the Compliance Minefield, will be held in January next year.

It will mark the beginning of what is aimed to be a long-standing collaboration to address an important skills gap in the built environment industry.

“We believe this will be just the start of a partnership that will develop a number of further training courses on best practice lighting provision for buildings,” says Pauline Traetto, BRE Academy’s Director.  

“Many industry professionals, such architects, engineers, facilities manager, planners and environmental health officers, have professional responsibilities for lighting, but are not always given the specialised training needed to optimise a solutions and prevent obtrusive light issues.”

ILP will provide expert trainers for courses developed in partnership,  and will be held at the BRE Academy in Hertfordshire. “Our first course in January will help those attending to  meet the National Planning Policy Framework requirements and  reduction of light pollution and responsible construction practices for BREEAM developments,” says Richard Frost, Chief executive of ILP.

“The course will also help them to confidently and fluently communicate on design and maintenance issues, in a way that prevents and resolves obtrusive light conflicts.”

Both organisations have expressed satisfaction at the way their respective contributions to the partnership are complementary. “We are delighted to have access to ILP’s outstanding expertise to help meet the lighting skills gap in the industry,” says Pauline Traetto.

Richard Frost adds, “This partnership gives us an excellent opportunity to expand our reach beyond the lighting sector, to the wide range of built environment professionals responsible for designing and operating lighting installations.”