Customized Skills Assessments Help ELIA Improve Certification Rates By 25%
ELIA Transmission Belgium (ELIA) is Belgium’s national high-voltage electricity transmission system operator. Through 50Hertz, It also operates in parts of Germany, which it obtained in 2010. The company transmits electricity from generators to distribution system operators that supply small and medium-sized enterprises and homes. ELIA also contracts with major industrial users that connect directly to its high-voltage grid.
ELIA’s main activities include maintaining and developing high-voltage installations, monitoring the balance between electricity consumption and generation, importing and exporting energy within the European Union (EU), and developing the electricity market within Belgium and the EU. ELIA also offers consulting and engineering services through ELIA Grid International (EGI), its subsidiary that was founded in 2014.
The Challenge
ELIA’s high-voltage electrical distribution sites are hazardous. So, all technicians and crew members—who work in or enter these facilities are legally required to undergo safety training and pass a test. The tests are administered in person to meet security regulations and prevent cheating. To accommodate ELIA in its preferred way of assessing in a classroom setting, online proctoring has not been opted for.
ELIA was administering over 100 paper-based assessments per day using MS Silverlight and proprietary apps. All results were manually processed using MS Excel and a handheld barcode scanner. This was inefficient and time-consuming, and it often caused trouble when printing the tests. So, ELIA began evaluating solutions that would help them administer assessments more efficiently so they could improve certification rates.
The Solution
The team evaluated WiseFlow, ThinkExam, and the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform™. It opted for an Enterprise subscription of the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform because of its customization and support options.
ELIA’s test content is very specific to high-voltage safety and quality certification. Testing and certification officers needed to import over 1,300 proprietary questions and created tests in Dutch, French, and English plus eight other languages–German, Bulgarian, Polish, Turkish, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese. An Enterprise subscription includes eSkill Author, which allows clients to add proprietary content and create customized skills assessments.
It was simple to set up and use, and team members could see and interpret results immediately. This made it easy to see which employees and contractors needed more training and to identify knowledge gaps. They could also call their dedicated Assessment Expert anytime they had a question or needed help.
The Implementation
The Results
Since ELIA has implemented the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform™, it has improved the efficiency of its entire testing process and increased the number of candidates it tests daily by 25%.
As Charlotte Peeters, Contractor Certification Officer for ELIA Academy explained, “We can get employees and contractors working out in the field more quickly. Also, testing and certification officers are more productive because they spend less time administering and proctoring tests and have more time to spend on other tasks.”
ELIA plans to develop additional customized skills assessments to help them comply with “Safety Culture Ladder” regulations that are part of the company’s Go4ZERO initiative.
Go4Zero originated in the Netherlands, and its objective is compliance with climate change and nuclear-free regulations. There are three types of electrical facilities in the EU–substations, buried cables, and power lines. As part of the Go4ZERO initiative, all will be changed from aluminium to carbon. The purpose of the Go4Zero certification training within ELIA is to further shape the mindset of its employees and contractors toward safety.
ELIA is thinking of implementing behavioral assessments in the future and also plans to add customized skills assessments on sea-based wind turbine operations. ELIA will acquire more international projects in the future and will need skills tests for technical training and safety content by country. In these cases, the team may use remote technical assessments along with online proctoring.
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