Level 3 NVQ Cladding

Yes. Level 3 on the Regulated Qualifications Framework is the same level as A levels and an advanced apprenticeship. It is a competence qualification rather than an academic one, so it proves you can do the job at that level rather than that you have studied it, which is what CSCS and main contractors want from a cladding fixer on the Gold card.

Sheeting and cladding if your week is industrial and commercial roofs and walls: preparing the resources, installing the systems, the rainwater goods and the curved and complex formations. Rainscreen if your week is preparing backing walls and installing rainscreen wall cladding systems on a frame. You take one pathway, plus options on top, and the initial assessment on this page works out which your work evidences.

No. There is no classroom and no exam. Everything is assessed on the cladding you already fix, through photographs and documents from your own jobs, an observation of you working and a professional discussion with your assessor. GQA require the evidence to be generated in the workplace, so it cannot be done in a training centre.

The Gold Advanced Craft card, which CSCS used to call the Advanced Craft card, valid five years. You need the Level 3 certificate plus a pass in the CITB Health, Safety and Environment test for Operatives, or GQA's own health and safety test, within the last two years, then the card application, which we make to GQA for you. It is the trade card, not the Gold Supervisor card, which needs a supervision qualification.

Yes, in case you need one. GQA issue a temporary card as soon as we register you and post it to you direct. It lasts up to twelve months and it cannot be renewed. We need your CITB HS&E test result report, a passport style photograph and the exact address to send it to, because GQA send it once. It is not a free Gold card: the Gold card follows the certificate.

As long as you take. There is no fixed duration, no cohort and no term dates, and the qualification is led by you. Someone with a phone full of stage photographs from recent jobs can be quick. The curved and complex unit and the rainscreen units need the right jobs, so your assessor plans them around what is coming up.

Photographs of each job at stages, from the backing wall and the brackets to the finished face, the setting out and system drawings you worked from, manufacturer fixing details, delivery notes and material checks, job sheets, witness testimony from the site manager, the RAMS you briefed, harness and MEWP inspection records. Your assessor maps each one to a unit and tells you what is missing.

Not as a substitute for the unit, but the work behind them counts. The options include boom type and scissor type mobile elevating work platforms, slinging and hand signalling suspended loads, and setting out secondary dimensional work control. If you do that work as part of cladding, your assessor can evidence it as an option and it goes on the certificate.

Any week. There is no intake and no waiting list. Click through the initial assessment and send it to us, and we will confirm your pathway, your options and what happens next.

Yes, employers can be invoiced and can put a whole gang through as one booking. A CITB grant may be available to CITB registered employers. Tell us who is paying when you enquire and we will set it out properly before anyone commits.

£950 + VAT. That is the whole qualification: registration with the awarding body, your assessor, the visits, the portfolio and the certificate. There is no separate exam fee and no course fee on top, because there is no course to attend. The CSCS card is applied for separately and CSCS charge their own fee for it.

Yes, and for an experienced cladding fixer working on rainscreen or built-up systems that is the normal route. There is no set length. You are assessed on the work you are already doing, so the pace is set by how quickly the evidence comes together rather than by a timetable. People who already have photographs, job records and a supervisor who will sign a witness statement often finish inside a few weeks. Nobody is held back waiting for a term to start.

Your assessor comes to you, on your own jobs, in your own working week. They watch you work, take photographs, ask you why you did it that way, and record it against the units. Between visits you upload evidence and your assessor tells you what is still missing. There is no college, no classroom and no written exam.