Cscs cards.

[sy76uk]

Forest, all of those tickets seem a bit OTT to me but the fact that your potential employers want them is no surprise.
If you did have all of the above and it cost you say 2k then you would end up with a job paying you £750 per week minimum without the hassle of quoting, ordering and paying for materials, vat returns, big tax bills ect and 2k in training for all that is nothing compared to a collage course in any trade.
As far as price vs day rate is concerned it's always a gamble.
You might get on jobs where it isn't possible to get down the same as others.
What if there's only 1 fork lift loading out a whole building site and the materials are a mile up the road in a storage area for example.
Last year I did a labour only job and got £10 per m2 on the block paving and £40 per m2 on the natural stone.
The natural stone we made good money on but the block paving was charcon woburn rumbled and because the came in packs that we couldn't use a block Barrow on we had to doubles handle everything which meant it took at least twice as long to lay so we might as well been doing it for £5 per m2.
I still made better many than the day rate which was £160 per day but they kept the blocks close with a tele handler. On other site's I might not have been so lucky.
Just stuff to think about mate.

Ilovesettmondays my my dad had and brother had there NVQ paid for by the firm they worked for. Some kind of site assessment I think.
Sod paying a grand for a price of paper I don't need though lol.
The £150 for the labourers card is bad enough.

[ilovesettsonmondays]

No ones ever asked for nvq lol either .going to do me streetworks supervisor ticket as soon as I finish this Boris super cycle job .even have separate traffic lights for the cyclists now .its confusing if your driving a motor.

[Forestboy1978]

Cheers for the feedback Sy76. Certainly take it under advisement.

2k in optimisation would get me on the first page of google though for fencing in my area.... It would however take months. Dunno......

[sy76uk]

I'm at the top of the first page on Google with my site forest.
Got there through links to yell.com, Facebook and regular updates.
I still get a lot more work through recommendations than from the Internet.
My next step will be to get a better website. The one I have looks nice and is well worded but it's basic and isn't mobile friendly so unless I upgrade it I don't think I'll keep first page listing for long.
The key is to have as many in coming and outgoing links as possible with high traffic go get a first page listing.
Hibu are pretty good for that and I don't think it would cost you 2k so worth a look.

[rxbren]

On the other side of the coin since I stopped using hibuy rank has increased still poor though

[DNgroundworks]

I turned down some work at bae systems due to the css card rubbish before xmas.

Quiet here to, lots of flood damage work coming up though, just waiting for the insurance companies to give the green light.

[sy76uk]

Went and took the second test today. The examiner calculated that between the class of 6 we had 90 years of experience between us. 2 of the class were under 20.
We all knew as much as she did about the stuff relevant to our trades.
I think she felt a little embarrassed that the majority of us had to sit the course.

[rxbren]

What test did you do?

[ilovesettsonmondays]

The fire extinguishers are the only thing I have to learn test😜

[Forestboy1978]

Cheers Sy76 for the valuable info. I definitely need to think. Either way I don't have the money to do that training but it's also the time as well.

Might look into cheaper way of advertising through the web. We are still working... just about..

[sy76uk]

It was the health and safety awareness course.
It's basically a 1 day lecture on health and safety on site's with paper test at the end.
There are 25 questions on the test that are exactly the same multiple choice ones you'd get with the health and saftey environment test we all have to take on the computer.
The course was really good and should be mandatory for anyone that has never worked on a building site but was more like teaching experienced workers how to such eggs.

I struggled with the fire extinguisher questions lol.

No problem forest. My advertising costs me about £600 a year and works well for me.
I don't think all fencing contractors will make you jump through as many hoops so it might be worth ringing round.

[rxbren]

that must be the test that the lad i have with me was on about can you still do the enviroment test on its own as thats the one i must of done years ago as you just turn up at the mobile van click a few buttons and disappear. He was trying to tell me thats its a 2 day course to get a cscs ticket to which my reply was eff off its just a simple common sense multiple choice test

[sy76uk]

The rules changed in October last year.
Now unless you have a blue skilled worker card you must do the both the multiple choice test you described and the 1 day course.
I think it's just a way for the citb to make money.

[mickg]

even more money now 6,000 workers have to re sit the test after a string of test centres were caught rigging health and safety exams

Centres caught rigging construction safety exams

[rxbren]

That's nothing new tests have always been 100% passable I remember years ago for a roller, dumper and slinger test you had an oral exam and the answers were on a laminated piece of paper which the examiners exact words were if any one don't know the answers just reword what's written