New Zealand Assessment Enters Singapore Market
Press release : 23rd March 2011
ASPEQ Limited is a New Zealand company that has historically been focussed on delivering exams to pilots and aircrew in New Zealand and Australia. Of more recent times it has undertaken the same service for financial advisers, builders and professional drivers in New Zealand as they endeavour to meet their new qualification standards.
In November the company commenced delivery of exam services to the Singapore Civil Aviation Authority (CAAS) for its aircraft maintenance engineers. Under this agreement CAAS runs its own exam invigilation service and supplies the exam centres to trainees and candidates, while ASPEQ supplies its specialist technologies for exams booking, results management, exam delivery and the aviation exam question banks. It also supplies remote support services.
Chief Executive Bruce Heesterman reports that exam delivery volumes in Singapore have already exceeded one thousand. He explains "ASPEQ's technologies are proving that they can deliver volume reliably, and efficiently. The booking systems are fully automated so that all syllabus and high stakes booking rules are enforced. All fees collections, the capacity of exam venues and the exam schedule itself are managed with minimal administrative attention. The exam delivery system while monitored by human invigilators includes sophisticated measures for the assurance of exam integrity, curriculum coverage and question quality, as well as for continuity of service addressing the variety of issues that may be encountered during exam sittings. This means we are able to offer exceptionally high service levels of availability, reliability, integrity of results, and even remote oversight of exam conditions to CAAS and its candidates."
ASPEQ in New Zealand and Australia has traditionally run a full outsourced exam delivery solution for regulators and awarding bodies, which has included a large component of operational management services. "With our ability to supply the technology and support to organisations around the world we are confident that we will have a more scalable business product offering for regulators and awarding bodies around the world. This also means that we can meet regulators' high standards and expectations of question design, security and data protection. To do this we have had to enter into a combination of cloud-based and traditional hosting arrangements in New Zealand and offshore to manage our applications, exam question bank content, and regulator data, to service levels that meet these expectations."
Bruce sees the arrangement with CAAS as "a further example of smaller New Zealand companies working smarter, and building up the credentials and technologies that will be needed to grow in a specialist market world-wide." ASPEQ already delivers exams in more than six countries outside New Zealand from its base in Lower Hutt, and has growth plans that will take it into other industries and geographical locations in the future.
For more information contact:
Bruce Heesterman, CEO, +64 4 918 1567, bruce.heesterman@aspeq.com