Recruitment
“Noel Harding is an exemplar L&D professional, whose technical knowledge, professional skill, and personal care are beyond compare in his field.
In my role, I have had the opportunity to work with many brilliant trainers and assessors over the years, but Noel stands out as the most consistently impactful, effective, and passionate.
Noel's competence as a facilitator of learning is unconscious - putting learners at ease, using empathy to respond to individual learners' needs (sometimes before they know they have them themselves!), and ensuring every learner gets the very most from every interaction.
But he is not fantastic at his job by accident...
The level of CARE Noel applies to his programmes is inspiring, from tailoring materials and updating activities to ensure they are as authentic and current as possible, to giving individual learners the right amount of coaching they need to commit to their development and feel confident with their learning.
Noel creates stimulating and social learning environments; learners enjoy they programmes with Noel, but they also walk away with new knowledge, skills, and behaviours. This is because every event is underpinning by Noel’s intimate knowledge of the standards, the industry, and the people. He understands the awarding bodies, and knows his documentation, criteria inside out and upside down. He embraces modern and developing learning theory and technology. He understands competence and compliance, and most importantly he KNOWS HOW TO KEEP PEOPLE IN OUR INDUSTRY SAFE.
I am not a big believer in "happy sheet" evaluation forms, but Noel's performance data from these, verification processes, and customer reviews is flawless. Even so, Noel always looks to develop himself, and find opportunities to improve the experience for learners.
Deservingly so, Noel has recently been promoted to a position of line management, where he is continuing to develop learners, but also develop a team of fellow training professionals - challenging them and inspiring them to embrace L&D as he does.
I am proud to work with Noel, and it makes me really pleased to think that the work Noel has done with EAL and Pearson over the last few years means that even if he hasn't taught them directly, there are hundreds of learners across The Railway that are now benefiting from Noel's experience, passion, and care.
Noel absolutely deserves to win this award!“
“Noel creates, refines and delivers content that improves our industry.
How so? Noel has been a leader within the team in creating three specialist programmes that he also delivers in conjunction with his colleagues across the team - for new Apprenticeship Standards; to provide high quality induction training for Armed Forces service leavers leading to long term employment and the development of qualifications for contractors who typically move between projects and can often receive less focus training-wise than permanent employers. In combination this has materially enhanced both quality and safety - enhancing or introducing structured and engaging content delivered to a wide range of audiences and businesses across the industry.
Noel has collaborated broadly with employers and Awarding Bodies to ensure that content is relevant and authentic and will ultimately make a real and positive difference to the working practices of those who use it. Equally Noel's work generated a high quality option for the delivery of the Level 3 Rail Engineering Apprenticeship in Traction and Rolling Stock, creating a great route for employers to get value from their Apprenticeship levy.
Words of course are cheap. It's easy to say 'industry impacting', but think of this - Noel's content will be delivered to 140 Rolling Stock apprentices who started schemes in 2018 who in turn work for employers that maintain trains serving 20 out of 23 Train Operating Companies. That's significant by any analysis.
It should also be noted that Noel has a day job as a Senior Trainer and the effort required to create what has been created involved extensive personal commitment of time and effort - all demonstrating initiative, pan-industry collaboration and ownership.
Proper trainers care and have a passion for people and people-based outcomes. Of course they do - and all of the other nominees in this category will demonstrate this in spades. Only so many however also have a rightful claim to have generated programmes and packages that have the potential to be life changing on such a broad scale. Noel has done that which is why he would be a particularly worthy winner in this category.“
“As Noel’s line manager I have witnessed his ability to develop not just the UK rail industry within rolling stock but our internal Learning and Development team. This is not a unique talent within our team; however Noel’s ability to guide and nurture his piers within by giving them ownership and responsibility is a skill to be recognised.
As per many of the current team the days of just delivering are enhanced by taking ownership of the whole end to end process. Most recently Noel has collaborated with one of our customers Clemtech and the awarding body EAL to develop an NVQ level 3 qualification in traction and rolling stock for contractors. When successful this has the opportunity to deliver a recognised benchmark of skills and competence to the contractor market across the UK for all rail industry to adopt.
Finally Noel is not one for the limelight and in fact he is not an individual seeking praise and glory – quite the opposite. He goes about his business under the radar as part of the team and so this nomination will not sit comfortably with him; however saying that he should be both proud of the nomination and most importantly proud people and piers recognise his contribution to the rail industry.“
“Noel Harding has been a mentor for me at multiple times in my career, perhaps unconsciously before consciously. When I came to work with Siemens as a Technician from an outside industry I worked with him on the shop floor, it was apparent at this point that he was a great trainer even without the job title. His knowledge of the fleets and more importantly eagerness to share this valuable knowledge, coupled with the rare ability to explain sometimes the most complex systems in a way that could be understood by people with differing skill levels and abilities made joining a new industry a much smoother transition.
With this natural ability to train whilst also carrying out business as usual as one of the more skilled fault finders on depot, finding the time to share and also get the job done it is no wonder that shortly after Noel was recruited into the training team. At this point I was lucky enough to receive multiple training courses from Noel. All of which benefited myself and my skill level, no matter how difficult the subject matter Noel managed to maintain a stress-free environment which for me is important to how I Learn.
Fast forward a couple of years and I am now in the fortunate position to be Noels colleague again, the second point in my career where he is been an exceptional mentor to me. I have been in training for just over two years and I am not sure I could have made the transition without Noel. In my first year the support he provided me was unparalleled, going way above and beyond his role. From taking days out of his busy calendar to deliver ‘Train the Trainer’ courses to me to boost my confidence, to spending hours on the phone in evenings and weekends to ease my mind and explain about courses I was worried about. All of which, thanks to Noel went exceptionally well.
Noel, still early in his career really has already left a huge footprint on the railway industry. Leading the charge with his work with NTAR getting Service Leavers valuable qualifications to encourage them and help them to join our industry and close that skills gap. His work again on the NTAR apprenticeship scheme which is arguably now one of the biggest and best around and is nominated in the National Transport Awards this year based on its success. His work with Siemens to redesign all training packages for new starters in a new, modern Competency Management System that ensure Siemens will have the highest skilled and most competent new starters they have ever had. The list goes on and on…
Due to all the reasons above, and many many more I believe Noel really does deserve this award, it would be a great recognition of all he has achieved in such a short amount of time, of which he often is reluctant to take credit for, often passing credit down to those that work around him absolving himself of any. If he won this award it would be great justice that the rightful recognition falls on his shoulders.“
“I nominate Noel for trainer of the year as I have had Noel for a teaching for a length of time and have had experience with his teachings and training sessions he has a lot of technical knowledge that as a trainee is invaluable and I believe he is one of the best at NTAR and thoroughly deserves this award.“
“Throughout my apprenticeship Noel helped me immensely with my log books and given training courses to understand systems on the trains as well as being able to finish my apprenticeship as well as I did.
Without his guidance and support, to not just myself, but to others too, takes his time to give assistance and won’t stop until everything is understood PROPERLY, many wouldn’t be able to be where they are now.
Even though I have moved on from Siemens, I cannot thank him enough for what he’s done to aid me.“
“Noel is an extremely enthusiastic trainer and has a very quirky and switched on attitude to teaching. He is brilliant at gauging people and is able to adapt his teaching style to suit many different personalities within the classroom, to gain maximum engagement in a subject. He will always go the extra mile to find resources and give extra guidance when needed. I would strongly recommend Noel for trainer of the year.“
“As the company's competence and verification manager I would like to highlight the behind the scenes work that Noel does especially for the development of the apprentices, from the planning of their observations, to the marking of their work in line with the awarding bodies’ guidelines.
Noel uses a wide range of different assessment methods including the latest form of technology which certainly goes a long way in making the apprentices feel at ease.
The feedback that he provides is constructive fair and reliable and where necessary firm, ensuring that the apprentice knows exactly what is expected prior to revisiting their submitted work.
Noel is equally at home observing apprentices in the work place, ensuring that the assessment plan is fully explained so everybody knows exactly what is expected of them and making them feel at ease at all times.
On many occasions whilst on depot I've said “where is Noel?â€, “Oh he's on the shop floorâ€, came the reply, and sure enough there he is offering guidance and help to the apprentices.
Noel is a highly motivated professional trainer who thrives on developing future generations of people working within the rail industry and in my opinion would be a worthy winner of this award."“
“I'd like to nominate Noel for Trainer of the Year as a result of his dedication and overall excellence in his role for Siemens.
My first dealings with Noel were back in 2015 when I joined Siemens and was lucky enough to secure a spot on a Desiro training course he was delivering. Noel has the ability to engage a room of people from a range of different backgrounds and his upbeat, enthusiastic attitude ensures that even the largest of slide packs remains interesting! Having joined Siemens with no rolling stock knowledge at all, I departed Noel's course with an excellent understanding of how the units worked which has stood me in good stead ever since.
In more recent times, I was responsible for managing the 'go-live' phase of GSM-R Project for the final two fleets in the UK to transfer from CSR - Heathrow Express' Class 332 & 360/2 fleets. After significant delays due to infrastructure, the go ahead was given at relatively short notice and the timescales for recruiting, training and competency assessing contract resource were tight. Noel was instrumental in reviewing the credentials of the contractors I recruited and specified the required training, ensuring it was organised to take place before the installation window began, even if this necessitated arranging dedicated courses at the depot. Noel made the competency requirements easy to understand and cancelled annual leave to visit London and complete the competency assessments to suit the project's timescales. Without Noel's support I would have had to extend the implementation programme, which was undesirable given the previous delays and large number of stakeholders involved.
Noel thoroughly deserves to win this award - he maintains a professional and extremely positive attitude to his work, ensuring high standards in everything he does, regardless of the challenges presented.“
“I recently had Noel teach me for a four week period at the national training academy for rail. Noel was incredibly knowledgeable about all things train related and he has a very personable manner when teaching which instantly put my group at ease.“
“I have been taught by Noel for a number of courses and thought he was an excellent trainer and down to earth. Throughout my courses he explained the subject matter well and when I struggled with a certain topic he brought me away from the group briefly and offered one to one training.“
“Noel is a professional trainer and assessor who has a wealth of knowledge on Traction and Rolling Stock and imparts this to the learners in a very easy and understandable way which puts them at ease. This covers not only apprentices but mature learners and across all level of an organisation.
His willingness to develop scenario for the apprentices to test their knowledge and skills are second to none and these are normal developed in his own time.
In my railway career which is now 40 years, to come across a trainer who has the passion and enthusiasm to ensure any of his learners leave wanting more is very rare and it is a pleasure to say Noel is one of the very few in our industry today who has that skill and would be a very deserving winner of this award.“
““It’s a one year noticed period to leave the military once your mind is made up.
Plenty of people had told me I would secure a job no worries, but it was when I heard it from Noel Harding at NTAR that I finally began to really believe it.
As a former serviceman himself, empathetic to the stresses of transitioning to civilian life, Noel quickly put my mind at ease. Willing to talk at length about his post military career experiences within the Rail Industry, he left me in no doubt I was heading on the right path.
During training, he tailored the learning to suit, elaborating on certain strong areas, whilst taking more time to cover the weaker areas in greater depth, all the while never happy to finish until I fully understood.
He thrives on seeing students learn, takes the training level above and beyond the required level and manages to do this all with both ease and a passionate enthusiasm.
Although Noel himself would humbly say he does nothing extraordinary, I feel he would be a fully deserving recipient of this award.–
“Thank you for Saturday night at the awards. My wife & I had a great time.”
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