Once you understand the business requirements for sustainability skills you can start to develop a program that meets those needs. However developing a customised program requires a series of decisions. These decisions require in depth knowledge of the available options balanced with your understanding of the business and skill needs.

There are a number of issues to consider:

• Gaining an depth of understanding of the application of the qualifications at the different levels and the skills and job roles they target
• Identifying whether a whole qualification or skills cluster is the best fit
• Deciding whether the skills needs align to a sustainability qualification or whether sustainability units should be added to a technical qualification
• Understanding and selecting the most suitable units of competency for the business’ needs
• Checking that your program meets the qualification packaging rules including any pre-requisites
• Knowing what aspects of a unit of competency can be contextualised and how to go about it.

Understanding a unit of competency

Units of competency are developed by industry to meet the identified skill needs of industry. Each unit of competency identifies a discrete workplace requirement and includes the knowledge and skills that underpin competency as well as language, literacy and numeracy and occupational health and safety requirements.

Broadly, each unit of competency describes:

• A specific work outcome
• The essential operating conditions under which the work is conducted
• The knowledge and skills required to achieve the work outcome to the standard
• The type and volume of evidence that must be gathered in order to determine whether the activity is being performed in a competent manner
• The conditions that must be met in conducting the assessment.

Units of competency now include an Assessment Requirements section, made up of Performance Evidence, Knowledge Evidence and Assessment Conditions. While the Assessment Requirements can be downloaded as a separate document (from training.gov.au) they form part of the unit of competency. In other words they are part of the requirements that must be met in assessment.

In the MSS units of competency the Performance Evidence and Knowledge Evidence requirements outline the type of evidence that should be collected in an assessment. They are clearly related to the Elements and Performance Criteria of the unit and should not go beyond what is required elsewhere in the unit.

However, because units of competency need to be used in a wide range of sector and/or business settings they typically do not:

• detail the procedures necessary to achieve a work outcome
• define the exact pieces of evidence
• specify the format that the evidence should take.

See the Core unit resources for more detailed information on interpreting the Sustainable Operations core units of competency.