CONCLUDING REMARKS
Autodesk’s Hassan Helmy, senior business development and sustainability leader, reflects on discussion at this round table debate and why sector-wide coordination and collaboration on skills challenges is such a hard nut to crack.
Hassan Halmy senior business development and sustainability leader
The UK power sector is embarking on an historic period of infrastructure delivery which will define success or failure in the national net zero mission.
Getting new assets done and network expansion complete depends entirely on the sector’s ability to mobilise the right people with the right capabilities at the right time. This requires more than the isolated efforts on tackling skills challenges and resource shortfalls that we have seen historically.
The challenge ahead demands sector-wide collaboration, shared innovation, and a willingness to rethink traditional models of workforce development.
“The challenge ahead demands sector-wide collaboration, shared innovation, and a willingness to rethink traditional models of workforce development.”
It was reassuring to hear sector leaders and skills specialists at our round table debate acknowledge this need – and great to learn about the active steps being taken hand-in-hand by GB’s transmission operators to form a shared understanding of workforce challenges, with input from their supply chain.
Getting this kind of scale behind sector skills initiatives is exactly what is needed and we at Autodesk are ready to lend our support. We need to make sure that early work to define and quantify sector skills and capability gaps lead to pragmatic and well-coordinated steps to address these.
For example, what role could commonly recognised skills passports have in increasing skills mobility in the sector? What granularity of current competency assessment is needed to support this idea and how should competency information be shared?
Another key consideration which should be built-in to a shared sector skills and workforce strategy should be the role of technology in alleviating resource constraints and enhancing the productivity of existing workers.
AI, automaton and other digital tools can make a meaningful difference here. If applied in a joined up way across the industry ecosystem they could radically reduce the amount of time and effort being poured into relatively low value tasks, cut out double working and eliminate communication breakdowns which are the root cause of so many inefficiencies in infrastructure projects.
"Autodesk is keen to support the establishment of a dedicated skills workstream as part of the IM4Power initiative.”
Related to this idea, one key action Autodesk is keen to support on the back of this discussion is to see the establishment of a dedicated skills workstream as part of the IM4Power initiative, which was set up to nurture best practice around information management in the UK power sector.
By embedding this new workstream into IM4Power we should ensure that actions to adopt technologies and practices aimed at improving efficiency are directly connected to steps to educate and upskill the individuals and teams who need to put them into action. There are also opportunities to forge links between the initiative and academia/vocational education and ensure the future needs of employers are built into the curriculum for key engineering and design courses.
This is an incredibly challenging and exciting time to be working in the UK power sector. But we need to make sure that challenge does not become an overwhelming burden for current workers in the sector and that we are doing everything in our collective power to accelerate work-ready talent into the right positions to keep delivery on track.
"Autodesk is keen to support the establishment of a dedicated skills workstream as part of the IM4Power initiative.”
Related to this idea, one key action Autodesk is keen to support on the back of this discussion is to see the establishment of a dedicated skills workstream as part of the IM4Power initiative, which was set up to nurture best practice around information management in the UK power sector.
By embedding this new workstream into IM4Power we should ensure that actions to adopt technologies and practices aimed at improving efficiency are directly connected to steps to educate and upskill the individuals and teams who need to put them into action. There are also opportunities to forge links between the initiative and academia/vocational education and ensure the future needs of employers are built into the curriculum for key engineering and design courses.
This is an incredibly challenging and exciting time to be working in the UK power sector. But we need to make sure that challenge does not become an overwhelming burden for current workers in the sector and that we are doing everything in our collective power to accelerate work-ready talent into the right positions to keep delivery on track.
