Cytech or City & Guilds (or other)?

If you were opening a business offering cycle maintenance (among other things), which qualification would you prefer any prospective mechanics to hold? Cytech is often referred to, but City & Guilds (as an examining board), is more established, so I wonder if anyone has any experience of both, or could give a pointer?

Cheers

Real world experience.

This is true, and IMO preferable. I just wonder if business insurance insists these days on a formal qualification? I'm not on that side of the counter, hence my question.

Agreed I’ve got level 1 & 2 C & G and the best mechs in the shop have experience with no certs. But Digger does the C&G training so that’s a win.

Insurance was the excuse my manager gave for making me do weldtech though in reality I think it was more about making it look like he was doing staff development since I’d been in post for a few years by that point.

There was no requirement for qualifications in the couple lbs I worked for nor Halfords but I left the last lbs almost 9 years ago so yeah, things may have changed.

Nah, but every shop likes to add bikes assembled or serviced by fully qualified cytech mechanics. It's pretty meaningless but I guess it warranties a minimum standard, there's a lot of useless mechanics about since it pays so bad.

I’ve heard that some shops just have one certified mechanic out of (many) so they can claim they’re a Cytech certified shop.

When I worked in Halfords 30+ years ago, it wasn’t even an expectation, hence a lot of dangerous bikes left the shop. I just imagine in this more litigation-heavy world, a business insurer would insist on some kind of professional accreditation.

I was told at my interview for Halfords that they’d be up for putting me through Cytech.

That never happened and instead they made me area trainer but still didn’t pay me anything more than minimum wage.

Le sigh.

With the litigation thing, something we talk about a lot at work is, if we’re going to go against ‘the guidance’ (usually British Cycling coaching shit), that’s fine, so long as we are able to justify why.

Cytech will ultimately only tech someone a fraction of what they will encounter in the real world, better than nothing but not much better than saying ' i do all my own bikes '. We recently had a new cycling circuit open nearby and they wanted to contract out the maintenance of the bicycle fleet, first question on the phone was 'do you have a cytech qualified mechanic? ' to which i passed the phone over to the manager.. 'no, we have a mechanic with 20 years experience including team support in uci races as opposed to one thats sat a week long course' was the reply. I felt pretty good about that. If you write good notes on each job either via lightspeed or some other epos to cover your work, have insurance etc and can show you have some kind of safety 'M' check before releasing a bike then theres no reason to make it a requirement.

Anyone experience with BikeInn’s course? Is their L2 equivalent to Cytech 2? Agreed about experience and I have a good amount, but looking to get qualed to help with insurance for a charity

BikeInn

You trying to get a holiday in spain into the deal?

Haha sorry - ‘The Bike Inn’. Though I’d much rather be going to Spain ;)

Ah that's a shame.

Dunno if the website isn't working right for me or what but I can't see any details of the course.

I reckon if it's for insurance you'll want to go for something that's well recognised. I've never heard of the IMI or Ofqual but that doesn't mean much. Maybe Cytech/Weldtech are better known though?

When I did cytech I learned a few tricks I’d never found anywhere else, so I think combined with experience it can be a good route. I’d been working on my own bikes (MTB, Road, track) for over 15 years before I did anything formal.
There were a few older, time-served but unqualified shop mechanics on my course who also found the secret things to be new to them.

I’m sure the C&G is equally good (I have a very old C&G which covers generally cutting bits of metal and joining them together with various methods type thing).
In a lot of cases with these things the course material is important but so is the person delivering it, a decent instructor can make the difference.

Edit: so can reading the date of the original question 🤦‍♂️