Valencia – 16.11.21. This morning, in the Assembly Hall of the Port Authority of Valencia (APV), the conference “Companies and port, committed to VET” was held, an event organised by Fundación Valenciaport in collaboration with the APV which brought together more than 60 representatives of companies from the Valencian port logistics community and from the secondary schools Pere Boïl, Abastos, El Grao, Almussafes and Ausiàs March.
The conference was inaugurated by the president of the Port Authority of Valencia and the Fundación Valenciaport, Aurelio Martínez, who announced that work is underway to “set up, together with the Generalitat, a Vocational Training centre in the Nazaret area. A further commitment by the port community to training and the generation of employment in a sector such as logistics, which requires professionals of all categories”.
Manuel Gomicia, Director General of Vocational Training, then spoke, stressing that the administration must “adapt training to the environment, offering flexible, practical and highly employable vocational training to provide the service that companies need”.
For his part, Pedro Coca, president of the association of logistics businessmen Propeller Valencia, wanted to stress the importance of a good qualification of human resources so that the businessman can “dedicate himself to strategy and not to practical and operational issues”.
Afterwards, Antonio Torregrosa and Ana Rumbeu, General Manager and Training Director of Fundación Valenciaport, shared with the port community the progress made in the pioneering FP Dual Inmersión Portuaria programme, as well as the results of the “Study of the professional profiles required by companies in the port community of Valencia”, carried out within the framework of the European project YEP MED, financed by the ENI CBCMED programme.
Study of Professional Profiles
The general objective of this study is to identify the most sought-after occupations, which are difficult to cover, by the companies in the Valenciaport cluster, and also to identify the training needs from the perspective of Vocational Training (VET) in order to adapt them and meet this demand. A mixed methodology was used to carry out this study, ranging from documentary analysis to interviews with experts in the port logistics sector and with staff from vocational training centres, as well as online surveys of more than 80 companies and working groups.
According to the representatives of the Valenciaport Foundation, some of the conclusions of this study were that there is an urgent need to facilitate and promote the incorporation, especially in international trade and transport and logistics cycles, of curricular content linked to new technologies, so that new graduates are proactive subjects in the implementation of the new challenges of the port community in terms of digital transformation: specific software for companies, Big Data, 4.0 technologies, blockchain technology, etc. They also highlighted as relevant, in view of the challenges in terms of environmental sustainability of the port community of Valencia, that vocational training centres and universities make the relevant efforts to incorporate and even prioritise curricular content related to or focused on raising awareness and providing new skills in energy transition and ecological sustainability. Furthermore, they mentioned that it is opportune to incorporate new units of competence and training modules, linked to international trade and transport and logistics cycles, in training cycles of a transversal nature (administration and finance, in particular). The aim is to respond to the needs of companies, creating more versatile graduates and orienting them towards their labour insertion in the port community of Valencia. Some of the Vocational Training centres are already planning advances in this direction.
Training and Employment Observatory of the Valencian Port Cluster
Finally, the General Director of Fundación Valenciaport announced the constitution of the Training and Employment Observatory of the Valencian Port Cluster, another initiative of the YEP MED project, within the framework of the Valenciaport Innovation Cluster. This training and employment working group materialises the desire for cooperation between public and private institutions and will contribute to the design of training programmes that guarantee learning, both in training centres and in companies, adapting future professionals to the needs of the labour market in the port logistics field and its characteristics and specificities, allowing the entry of young people and new professionals into this labour market in an efficient and effective way. The priorities of this working group, which will meet every six months, are: to adapt the programme of the higher degrees in International Trade and Transport and Logistics Management to the needs of the market; to involve the companies of the cluster in the training of teachers and students of VET and to promote actions of guidance, advice and dissemination of the Port Immersion Dual VET to attract students, especially female students.
The Entities making up the working group at the time of its constitution were the following: Direcció General de Formació Professional i Ensenyaments de Régim Especial. Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana); Labora; Asociación Naviera Valenciana (ANAV); ATEIA (Asociación de Transitarios, Expedidores Internacionales y Asimilados); Fundación Valenciaport; Autoridad Portuaria de Valencia; Colegio Oficial de Agentes de Aduanas; Federación Valenciana de Empresarios del Transporte (FVET); Propeller Club Valencia; plus the companies: Logitren, IFS; Grupo Torres, MPG, Vitrans Group, CSP, MSC, Chema Ballester, CADE and TIBA, and the secondary schools: Pere Boïl de Manises, Ausiàs March and Abastos de Valencia, and Lluis Sunyer de Alcira.
The workshop ended with a speech by the Regional Secretary for Education and Vocational Training, Miguel Soler, who presented the new features of the new vocational training law and once again stressed the need for more flexible and flexible training with greater autonomy for the centres, and also announced that “the idea is to continue to grow and offer more and more vocational training places every year”.
The event was attended by representatives of all the companies that have welcomed the students of the Port Immersion Dual VET programme, who took a family photo, as well as the entities that have participated and provided data for the study of professional profiles.
