Twentieth anniversary portraits: Steve Mulvany

24 May 2024

 

Steve Mulvany has been a key member of LCL Awards’ team since Kevin Budd called him, back in 2008, and asked him to come and work for Logic Certification. Steve was working for CORGI at the time and had been Kevin’s CORGI inspector at Logic4training.

Back then, Logic Certification was looking for a director to oversee the development and running of its ACS and OFTEC schemes. The company was much smaller then and had been running some electrical and energy efficiency courses following the appointment of Mark Krull as director in 2005. Gas Safe had taken over CORGI’s role in regulating gas qualifications in 2009 and the enforcement of standards have become more rigorous.

A couple of years later and Kevin, Gayle and Mark were looking to develop the business further. They wanted Steve to develop some new regulated qualifications with the help of Eric Holland, who had been recruited from OFQUAL, as Compliance Manager. The combination of Steve’s experience at CORGI and Eric’s experience working in the educational sector, made them a great team. Steve looks back:

“The rigours of regulation are tough. Eric and I came from vocational rather than academic backgrounds, but OFQUAL could see we were serious. In the beginning, our early submissions were bounced back to us, but we stuck at it and worked closely together, determined to get it right! Eric was responsible for compliance, and I focussed on things from the operational point of view and in 2011 Logic Certification was recognised by OFQUAL as an Awarding Organisation.

“Having OFQUAL’s assurance gave us credibility and after that it became a matter of fine-tuning and getting down to the crucial business of selling the qualifications. We lobbied industry and began to get ourselves noticed. This all happened at a time when the people running smaller private training centres were beginning to look for alternatives to the large, established Awarding Bodies who’d always held the reins, but were somewhat inflexible. We were able to show them that we could work with them to produce the qualifications their learners needed and respond quickly to changes in legislation and developments within the industry.

“It was a challenge to start with, but as our reputation grew, we could see the tide turning and we began to expand, to develop qualifications in gas, electricity, and renewables. We’ve seen steady growth since then with qualifications in almost all areas of Building Services, but we have managed our expansion carefully - as with success comes responsibility.

"We’ve always been sure to keep customer service at the forefront of what we do, and our administration team is key. We work hard to keep our centres happy, for instance, we make sure that there’s always a technical person in the office, so if our centres need technical help, there’s always someone to hand.

"I saw myself during those years early years of expansion as a kind of mental gymnast, dealing with everything all at once! I’m a lot older than I was then, so over the last few years we’ve been preparing for my eventual retirement.

"When we promoted Neill Ovenden as Operations Manager in 2019, we could see he had great potential and so effectively, we’ve done a job swop. He’s recently taken on my role as Operations Director and I’ve stepped into his of Operations Manager. I’m not ready to stop working yet and I’ve been told I’m still useful! I’m proud of what Eric and I have done, but Neill brings a new dynamic to the role which will no doubt help LCL Awards in its next phase of growth.  It's wonderful to look back over the years I’ve been here and see how far we’ve come. I wisht them every success in wherever they take the company in the future.”