National Grid wanted to roll out bespoke applications to planning and engineering communities for both Gas and Electricity which were designed to help each group to manage their working processes (receive work, update work orders, and submit them back into the system). Planners were to use the applications to take work from their asset management database and send it out to the engineers, the engineers would then pick up the task and, ultimately, fill in the database when the job was closed.

As the business had grown through acquisition there was a need to create bespoke training courses that recognised the differences in system functionality used by the different groups.

National Grid recognised the importance of high quality, tailored learning as a key step in the adoption of the new tools and engaged QA early in the process to form part of the project, developing high quality bespoke learning solutions that accurately reflected the day to day reality of the teams involved.

QA's starting point was to have a Bus Apps trainer and Project Manager spend 10 days working with National Grid to gain a deep understanding of the requirement and the development of the three applications that made up the workflow. On the back of this work, QA was able to create a detailed statement of work and project plan which involved developing learning content alongside the development of the software. To ensure ongoing connection, trainers were embedded within the project team to make sure any changes were fed into the courseware design processes.

To get the strong engagement required, training was developed along a "day in the life" theme and courses were developed for the four key groups.

Content development finished in early February 2014 and QA was able to share a simulated capture of the training end-to-end. Training delivery was then split such that National Grid delivered to the planning communities while QA used a team of eight trainers to deliver to the engineers. The QA team underwent three weeks of product training and were then deployed in sync with the physical roll out between March and June.

Engineers would turn up onsite in the morning, hand over their old equipment and then attend the training. At the end of the session all engineers would give full feedback on the training and collect their new equipment, ready to use the new tools the following day.

The programme was successfully delivered during 172 events to approximately 1,376 delegates.

Feedback from delegates was reported to be the highest satisfaction rate achieved within National Grid:

• 95% of delegates were either satisfied or very satisfied with the training
• 97% attendance for the duration of the training
• Company-wide feedback has been very positive.