Zzeus Training confirms increase in manufacturer involvement

Jenni Broad, customer research lead at Advanced, informed Fire Safety Matters: “Advanced is delighted to supply Zzeus Training through the delivery of our latest MxPro5 panels. Having tomorrow’s fire alarm engineers learning about and using our systems can only be a good thing for the sector. We’re extremely confident that the learners will be taught about our systems at a very high level by the team at Zzeus Training.”

Zzeus Training’s managing director is Dr Tom Brookes, who has been resident in the fire industry for some 30 years now and recently became the UK’s first Chartered Engineer based solely on fire alarm system credentials.

Brookes established Zzeus Training back in 2011 and trained fire alarm engineers mainly for the British Fire Consortium. Towards the beginning of 2018, he formed the view that the quality of training and qualifications available in the industry for fire alarm engineers and technicians wasn’t at the required standard. As such, Brookes began working alongside Kevin Sparrow from EAL (the specialist Awarding Organisation for engineering and manufacturing) to create a meaningful and achievable qualification for the fire alarms sector.

The first fire alarm qualification was launched in 2019 and entitled the EAL Level 3 Award in the Requirements of Fire Detection and Fire Alarm Systems for Buildings (BS 5839-1:2017). The qualification – in tandem with the training delivered by Zzeus – broke new ground in the sector. There was now a very high-quality Ofqual-approved Level 3 qualification. Hands-on practical training from Brookes and his team meant that this became an instant success.

Under the leadership of chief operating officer Al Parkes, EAL has added four more qualifications for the fire alarm sector and has become the fire alarm sector‘s leaders in terms of Ofqual-approved qualifications. The chair of the Board at EAL is none other than Dame Judith Hackitt.

The team at Zzeus Training has added the BS 5839-6 qualification to its portfolio and will be running some combined BS 5839-1 and BS 5839-6 courses, allowing learners to gain two Level 3 qualifications at the same time.

Tom Brookes commented: “Coming from a background of having very few qualifications, I have an internal drive to enable every candidate who visits us to shine and improve their skills and self-worth. The fire alarm sector has been an amazing industry for me and this is my chance to give something back.”

*Further information is available online at www.zzeus.org.uk