Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education

Trailblazer Portal

The trailblazer portal provides groups of employers wanting to develop an apprenticeship for their industry, a collaborative area in which to develop occupational standards. Working closely with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, Method4 built a high-quality portal and website, which includes the Apprenticeship Builder to manage the process of developing new apprenticeships.

THE SERVICES WE PROVIDED

Application Development

Web Design

User Experience

Digital Transformation

Apprenticeships allow learners to develop the knowledge and skills they need to become competent in an occupation and provide industry with the skilled workforce it needs. The Institute ensures apprenticeships are a consistent high quality as well as providing a process for developing new apprenticeships.

The Apprenticeship Builder allows the employers or ‘trailblazers’ to develop new apprenticeship standards, managing the development and approval process of an apprenticeship, from its initial proposal all the way through to delivery.

Apprenticeship standards, in various stages of their development are published to the public facing website, which contains a comprehensive search facility.

CHALLENGES

digital transformation of complex business processes for developing and approving apprenticeship standards
easy to use apprenticeship builder, to lead users through the process of developing apprenticeship standards
integration with the Institute's management information system
approval workflows and role based access control

TECHNOLOGY

.NET

AZURE

Umbraco

THE SOLUTION

website built using the Umbraco content management system
integration with other systems through RESTful Web APIs
bespoke Apprenticeship Builder built using Microsoft MVC.NET
multi-phased development built in agile SCRUM based sprints
cloud hosting in Microsoft Azure
continuous integration pipelines through Azure DevOps

OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS

portal allows tight collaboration on the development of apprenticeship standards
ensures a consistent workflow for building apprenticeship standards
improved visibility of apprenticeship standards in various stages of development
an efficient and scalable system allowing for future growth in data and processing
more consistent and structured data for apprenticeship standards