Why Lucid?
Lucid Optical Services Ltd was created to offer the highest quality training in fibre optics, laser safety and communications cabling. Our staff have a passion for their specialist subjects and a desire to impart knowledge and skills clearly to others. It is our staff who make us special, so we tell you about who we are and the qualifications we have.
The 'Lucid' brand name was chosen since we believe that training should be broken-down into simple blocks and clearly delivered.
Some questions to ask about any training course provider are:
- Instructor Qualifications & experience: see the staff page for more information about each of our instructors.
- Number of trainees: we only take a maximum of six delegates on public courses.
- Equipment: Number of trainees per fusion splicer and per OTDR. At Lucid, we provide at least three modern fusion splicers and three OTDRs for a course with six trainees.
- Training facility: click here for more about our custom built training centre.
- Manufacturer ties: as an independent training company we are not required to use or recommend any one brand of equipment.
- Support: what on-going support will you get? At Lucid it's free and unlimited.
- Solvency: we strongly recommend checking references and looking up the status of any training providers on Companies House website at www.companieshouse.gov.uk/info/ - training is often paid for in advance so don't risk losing your cash or deposit with disreputable companies. Also beware of name changes or "re-branding" as this can be used to hide past sins.
Independent References
As an approved City & Guilds Centre, Lucid is inspected every year by an independent external verifier appointed by the City and Guilds Institute. Click here to read the reports from these visits by an independent expert familiar with training, assessment and best practice:
Link to City & Guilds External Verifier Reports
Similarly, as a member of the Open College Network (OCN), our regional organisers, TROCN, appoint a qualified assessor to check and report on our training programmes. Click here to read the comments from these reports:
Link to OCN External Moderator Comments on Lucid Training
These comments and reports by independent auditors are significant because it is very rare for a centre ever to be stripped of approval, but many get poor or mediocre reports with recommendations for improvements.
Lucid has consistently had exceptionally good reports - try our training courses and find out why for yourself.
We have also collected all of the comments trainees have written on their course report forms since Lucid started. Trainee comments are very valuable to us. We enjoy the many favourable comments, but on the rare occassion we get a slightly negative comment within the feedback we take this very seriously and look to ensure this never happens again. The only repeat comments that are not favourable tend to refer to 'bad jokes', but even here some trainees have commented that they help to lighten the mood and can also help enable them to remember some things better. Click here to read the comments.