Irish-based company ThirdForce has won a contract to deliver e-learning to the staff working in BP Retail’s forecourts. This is a sizeable contract covering the 270 BP Retail sites as well as 1200 franchised dealer sites. Covering literacy, food safety and numeracy, the learning modules will be delivered using ThirdForce’s el-box™ system, based on a touch-screen tablet PC that contains all the course content. In addition, ThirdForce will also deploy its AIM™ training management system, which will allow BP to manage, administer and evaluate all staff training. Prior to the decision to use e-learning, all staff from BP Retail who needed training had to attend off-site venues.

ThirdForce, listed on AIM and on Dublins’s IEX market, claim to be the largest independent e-learning company in the UK. Their stated aim is also to enter America, the world’s largest e-learning market. Given that their domestic growth has been driven substantially by acquisitions - Electric Paper (2003) and Creative Learning Media (2005) we assume they will be looking to buy into a mid-sized US e-learning company in the next 18 months.

In the meantime, they are also active in the UK schools market and recently launched their Lesson Studio for ICT for Key Stage 3 at the recent NAACE annual conference. They also have contracts in the Middle East and Africa to deliver the International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) and in Europe the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL).
www.bp.com

www.ecdl.com

www.thirdforce.com