Tackling the biggest threat to Clean Power delivery – the skills gap
Tackling the biggest threat to Clean Power delivery – the skills gap
If you work in the utilities industry, you’d be hard pressed to have missed that there is an enormous and imminent challenge facing infrastructure owners in the run up to 2030. In short order, they will need to deliver capital investment programmes which dwarf any that have been seen for decades in the UK.
The pressure is most perhaps most obvious in power transmission where around £60bn of investment is due to roll out over the next T3 price control period – five times what was spent on the transmission system in T2 – largely centred around achieving government’s Clean Power 2030 ambitions.
The challenge of delivering all of this work in the next few years is a great source of excitement and motivation in the power sector. But like any audacious goal, the investment plans set out by the transmission operators are closely attended by the risk of failure.
Barriers to successful delivery of transmission plans abound. From public opposition to the readiness of internal processes to handle an explosion in the scale and pace of work and the productivity levels of asset owners and their delivery partners.
But the issue which was recently identified in Utility Week research as the biggest stumbling block to delivery is a shortage of skilled people – both in terms of the volume of new recruits needed and the ability of existing workers in the sector to keep pace with advances in areas like digital construction and programme management which are needed to meet the delivery challenge.
The prominence of skills gaps as a key barrier to Clean Power delivery is no surprise. Analysis from Energy & Utility Skills Group shows the power sector need to attract 132,000 new recruits by 2030 to deliver on business plans. That’s 22,400 people per year that need to be attracted into the sector to replace retiring professionals and populate a swathe of new jobs in planning, design, construction and more.
If you work in the utilities industry, you’d be hard pressed to have missed that there is an enormous and imminent challenge facing infrastructure owners in the run up to 2030. In short order, they will need to deliver capital investment programmes which dwarf any that have been seen for decades in the UK.
The pressure is most perhaps most obvious in power transmission where around £60bn of investment is due to roll out over the next T3 price control period – five times what was spent on the transmission system in T2 – largely centred around achieving government’s Clean Power 2030 ambitions.
The challenge of delivering all of this work in the next few years is a great source of excitement and motivation in the power sector. But like any audacious goal, the investment plans set out by the transmission operators are closely attended by the risk of failure.
Barriers to successful delivery of transmission plans abound. From public opposition to the readiness of internal processes to handle an explosion in the scale and pace of work and the productivity levels of asset owners and their delivery partners.
But the issue which was recently identified in Utility Week research as the biggest stumbling block to delivery is a shortage of skilled people – both in terms of the volume of new recruits needed and the ability of existing workers in the sector to keep pace with advances in areas like digital construction and programme management which are needed to meet the delivery challenge.
The prominence of skills gaps as a key barrier to Clean Power delivery is no surprise. Analysis from Energy & Utility Skills Group shows the power sector need to attract 132,000 new recruits by 2030 to deliver on business plans. That’s 22,400 people per year that need to be attracted into the sector to replace retiring professionals and populate a swathe of new jobs in planning, design, construction and more.
Companies aware of this challenge. The question is, what can they do to assuage it? At a recent round table event hosted by Utility Week and Autodesk for the Infrastructure Delivery Forum (a cross-TO initiative) attendees put forward their views on what needs to be done to:
- Ensure firms make the most of existing talent
- Explore the role technology can play in alleviating resource shortages
- Develop smarter approaches to tackling shared skills and resource gaps across the industry eco-system
