Lessons from industry leaders
Transmission sector leaders were joined at our recent round table event by relevant experts from sector skills organisations, standards bodies and academia.
Below, key insights form their conversation about ways to tackle industry skills constraints more proactively and effectively are summarised below.
Making the most of what we have
The first step towards responding to a widely acknowledged shortage of appropriately skilled people to support delivery of new transmission infrastructure is to ensure we are making the most of existing personnel, agreed our group.
This needs to begin with detailed competency assessments within key disciplines like design, project management and construction. These assessments need to align directly with any specific new approaches to delivery being adopted – for example knowledge and confidence in the use of specific technology platforms or delivery methodologies like Project 13.
A fundamentally important area for competency assessment and accelerated learning, our group unanimously agreed, is around information management practices.
A fundamentally important area for competency assessment and accelerated learning, our group unanimously agreed, is around information management practices. Recent research conducted by Utility Week and Autodesk for the Infrastructure Delivery Forum showed “inconsistent information sharing” to be the biggest source of inefficiency across power sector infrastructure projects today. So attaining a clear picture of current levels of understanding about best practice and information management standards like BIM, should be a priority focus area for accelerated learning, it was agreed.
More generally, our group were clear that without building a detailed understanding of current competencies it will be impossible for asset owners and key partners to build a realistic appreciation of the risk to delivery posed by different skills shortfalls. Furthermore, it will be impossible for them to build common and consistent approaches to developing these competencies – an essential platform for skills standardisation and increased skills mobility across the sector (themes explored in more detail below).
Attendees were keen to discuss different approaches to supporting development and learning alongside the considerable pressure to deliver in the here and now.
Based on anecdotal accounts shared, it appeared there has so far been an inconsistent approach to competency assessment across the transmission owners and key partners. In certain areas, competencies are understood at a granular level and linked to detailed personal development plans for individuals. Whilst in other areas, knowledge of team competencies still feels very assumptive and/or has not been linked to proactive development plans.
On this theme, our attendees were keen to discuss different approaches to supporting development and learning alongside the considerable pressure to deliver in the here and now.
The need to support varied learning styles (e.g verbal/visual and social/solitary learning approaches) and fit learning in flexibly around day jobs was discussed in some detail. Likewise, attendees took great value from sharing tips and experiences on how to develop management cultures which support diverse development options, while still emphasizing the need for competencies to come up to scratch in short order.
Collaboration and coordination
While companies work hard to bring their own competency assessment and skills strategies up to scratch, there is insufficient effort being put into a creating standardised approaches to skills development and recruitment across the power sector, our group concluded.
Discussion highlighted huge untapped potential for better coordination and optimisation of existing skills initiatives. A need for greater alignment between employers developing competency frameworks for infrastructure and vocational or academic education institutions developing their curricula to boost the work-readiness of their students, was also identified.
In this context, the need for standardised descriptions of the key skills and competencies being targeted by employers became crystal clear. Not only would greater alignment here help educational institutions design courses which produce graduates who can hit the ground running in the workplace, it would also support skills mobility for workers with relevant skills in other areas on the energy and utilities industry – or adjacent sectors. For instance, several industry leaders and training specialists at the table were keen to explore the potential for “skills passports” to be developed based on standardised competency requirements from asset owners and supply chain partners.
To help move towards this kind of output, it was agreed far more collaboration is needed to define skills needs and develop collective strategies for addressing these. Great hope was placed in a recently established initiative which has the backing of all three GB transmission operators – the Energy Transmission Industry Skills & Workforce Planning Charter.
Several industry leaders and training specialists at the table were keen to explore the potential for “skills passports” to be developed based on standardised competency requirements from asset owners and supply chain partners.
This scheme aims to create a holistic view of the immediate and longer term skills needs of the transmission owners as they strive to deliver strategic infrastructure which will support national decarbonisation and energy security objectives. The charter has already reached out to encompass many tier 1 suppliers in the power transmission ecosystem and there are ambitions for it to extend further into the supply chain, and to power distribution as ED3 business plans become more sharply defined.
The Charter is being developed in partnership with Energy & Utility Skills (E&U Skills), the sector skills organisation of energy and utilities, bringing clear benefits through coordination with the National Skills Academy for Power which E&U Skills also runs.
Other opportunities to bring together initiatives with mutual interest to help accelerate and scale-up action to mitigate skills challenges were also highlighted. For example, our group agreed it should be taken as a priority action to exploit clear synergies between IM4Power – a recently established best practice community for information management in the power sector – and the WorldSkills Digital Construction competition. This global vocational skills initiative draws in significant global expertise and could play a key role in a new IM4Power workstream dedicated to education and competency planning.
Easing pressures with technology
Our group were clear that there is untapped potential for technology to help alleviate the pressures created on people by fast paced delivery of an unprecedented volume of capital projects.
Arguably the most obvious opportunity for technology to support delivery and mitigate risks posed by a shortage of skilled people is automation. Numerous attendees talked about their expectation that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could play a key role in executing time consuming tasks – for instance in design feasibility assessments – thereby releasing skilled resource for other high value activities. The potential of AI to accelerate early design decision making was explore in detail at t a previous round table hosted by Utility Week for the Infrastructure Delivery Forum. A summary of that event can be found here.
Another important opportunity for technology to alleviated skills challenges that are hampering new infrastructure delivery is through knowledge capture, our attendees agreed. While the scope for AI to absorb the knowledge and experience of retiring professionals and redeploy this in training and support to newer recruits has long been discussed, our group agreed it is generally underutilised.
A fundamentally important area for competency assessment and accelerated learning, our group unanimously agreed, is around information management practices.
Likewise, several attendees extoled the virtues of using virtual or augmented reality tools to accelerate training and accreditation processes – either targeted at new recruits or the upskilling of current sector workers. Using these technologies can rapidly “accelerate the time to competency” for individuals said one infrastructure design specialist. Others working in construction strongly agreed, emphasizing the “critical” role technology can play in “skills standardisation” and “accelerated learning at scale”.
The use of these kinds of tools needs to be become the norm rather than the exception, our group agreed, to address immediate skills needs. However, there were some notes of caution. Several experienced industry and skills specialists pointed out that before companies start automating skills transfer, they need to be confident that that captured knowledge will help embed the right standard processes and policies for the future.
“How can you take knowledge that one person has learned iteratively over the course of decades and turn it into something which is easily explained and reflects what you want a standard process to look like in the future?” questioned one participant.
