Palace Chemicals is putting the spotlight firmly on training, with the launch of its Skills Hub – a dedicated training suite based at the company’s manufacturing site in Speke, Liverpool.
This new offering is aimed at developing skills throughout the industry, building on Palace’s 46 years of experience, and is said to demonstrate the company’s ongoing commitment to customers and the wider tiling industry.
Working alongside multiple industry partners, Palace will deliver educational courses that will promote best practice in the industry for new and experienced fixers. It will also develop specific courses to increase awareness regarding changes in standards and regulations about various types of substrates, tile sizes and installations, such as tanking wetrooms for example.
As well as providing courses aimed at both new and experienced fixers, the training partnership led by Palace Chemicals offers courses aimed at supporting tile retailers, said to further demonstrate the company’s partnership-based approach with its customers.
Palace is also pleased to announce it has partnered with Tilers Community to enable it to engage further with professional tile fixers around the country through the well-established forum. According to Palace, this partnership sits perfectly with what Skills Hub is looking to achieve.
Sam Hoffman of Tilers Community says: “Palace is a huge part of the industry and it is great that it is demonstrating its commitment to give something back to the industry and especially to members of Tilers Community. We’re looking forward to what we achieve together in the coming years.”
Palace is also promoting tailored courses both to apprentices within the industry and to students attending training courses in local colleges, assisting them in their professional journeys.
Demographically, the company is aware that there are many established and skilled tile fixers nearing the ends of their careers, who are looking to retire. This is not unique to tiling, and it has been highlighted many times that a widening skills gap is having a damaging impact in the construction sector. A Construction Skills Network report published during the summer stated that there are “substantial recruitment and training challenges” in the industry. It said that an extra 251,500 construction workers would be needed by 2028 to meet the expected levels of work. Furthermore, a House of Commons Committee Report expressed fears that the skills shortage is also hampering the delivery of key national infrastructure projects.
Meanwhile this is coinciding with a reduction in recent years in funding for training courses, making it more difficult for young people especially to join the industry. This is something on which The Tile Association has lobbied the government, in the hope of helping to improve the funding climate. So it is more important than ever to make sure tile fixers have an understanding of the industry and standards that are required.
“We believe it is imperative for leading suppliers to step into the breach,” says Steve Ball, Palace’s commercial director. “With new tiling products, grouts and adhesives constantly coming on to the market, along with ever-changing regulations and standards, it’s really important to keep our skill levels up to date, in order to ensure customer satisfaction and ultimately to maintain profitability levels with the trade as a whole. So we’re very excited about our latest initiative on this, which, given the scale of the Palace business, we believe will make a real difference. I was once a tiler myself, and I wish I had access to this resource when I was starting out in my career.”
Palace’s Skills Hub is located within its Liverpool factory and office complex. The company believes cooperation across trades is important to drive up skill levels in the sector. For that reason, the company plans to work with a number of key industry partners, when it comes to the delivery of courses. The first courses will be promoted in the trade press and on social media in the coming weeks.
Among the companies Palace will be partnering with is BEWI Building Systems and Construction Board. Michael Hailwood, director BEWI Insulation & Construction UK, says: “Palace’s team together have centuries of experience within our industry, more than many realise. We’re really looking forward to jointly delivering apprentice and industry specific training alongside the Palace team and others in 2025.”
This initiative is not the first time that Palace has tackled the issue of training within the sector. The company has been carrying out internal and external training for many years to ensure that its technical sales staff and customers have a good understanding of the latest product trends and applications. In recent months it has also introduced a new RIBA-approved CPD presentation entitled “Successful Specification of Wall and Floor Tiling and how to avoid Common Failures”.
This was developed specifically for architects, specifiers and large contractors, enabling them to keep their CPD qualifications up to date. It will be followed in the coming months by two further CPDs, one of which will be on the topic of sustainability.
The RIBA-approved CPDs are delivered throughout the country by Nick Bratt, Palace’s national technical sales manager, supported by what Palace describes as one of the most experienced and knowledgeable field support teams in the industry.
“The average length of service in our team is over 22 years across the entire business, and among our board of directors it is more than 35 years. The benefit to the industry of Palace Chemicals sharing this wide range of experiences cannot be understated,” says Bratt.
One of the most important areas in which training needs to be kept up to date concerns British Standards – for example the changes included in the recent update to Part 3 of BS 5385 Codes of Practice, the British Standards for wall and floor tiling.
This serves as an important reference for all those in the tiling sector, promoting best practice and quality outcomes, and follows the last major review in 2018 which stated that bespoke tile backer boards are the best substrate for wall tiling, as they offer a dimensionally stable wall background to moisture and thermal movement. Additionally, they offer benefits over plywood including increased weight limits for tiling.
Those involved in specifying products also need to be aware of the requirements of the Building Safety Act, which came into force in 2022. This includes what is called the Golden Thread, basically a system of traceability of all building products to maximise the safety of buildings and their occupants.
Traceability is also a key benefit of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) which are now becoming more common on all building products, including tiles, adhesives and grouts. These quantify environmental information regarding the life cycle of a product, enabling comparisons between products fulfilling the same function. Increasingly specifiers are looking for evidence of CPDs for products being used on site, so this is something else that tile fixers need to be aware of.
Approved Document M has also just come into force. The main objective of this is to enable all people to travel around a building safely and without risk of personal injury. The document relates specifically to bathroom facilities for disabled people, so its provisions can impact significantly on the work of tile fixers.
All these considerations, as well as the latest product developments and technical innovations, will feature strongly in the training courses being delivered at Palace Chemicals’ Skills Hub.
www.palacechemicals.co.uk
