Balfour Beatty, the international infrastructure group, has joined with Energy and Utilities businesses to address the skills gap. Through the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership the first ever joint Workforce Renewal and Skills strategy for this sector has been launched.
The energy and utilities sector requires 221,000 new recruits by 2027, in order to provide the essential services its customers seek and the infrastructure the UK needs for its economic growth.
The Strategy has been created to take the first steps towards ensuring that the UK’s vital energy and utilities sector retains a safe, skilled, resilient and sustainable workforce. It sets out for the first time, in one place, the reality of the challenges faced, immediate initiatives that are underway and the ambitions the Skills Partnership shares in moving towards achieving a more sustainable future. This Strategy sets its immediate focus to 2020, and then will continue to evolve as the Skills Partnership and the wider industry works with key stakeholders, interest groups and other sectors to deliver an extensive program of change and cooperation.
Paul Raby, Balfour Beatty HR Director, said of the strategy, "The Energy and Utilities Skills Partnership joint Workforce Renewal and Skills Strategy is the first step in promoting the opportunities in the Energy and Utilities industry and securing a talented and skilled workforce. Combined with such organisations as The 5% Club, which focuses on attracting new talent such as apprentices, graduates and sponsored students, the infrastructure industry is working together to tackle the skills shortage together".
The full release distributed by the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership, can be read here
ENDS
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Antonia Walton
Balfour Beatty
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Notes to Editors
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Balfour Beatty (www.balfourbeatty.com) is a leading international infrastructure group. With 34,000 employees, we provide innovative and efficient infrastructure that underpins our daily lives, supports communities and enables economic growth. We finance, develop, build and maintain complex infrastructure such as transportation, power and utility systems, social and commercial buildings.
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Our main geographies are the UK, US, Middle East and South East Asia. Over the last 100 years we have created iconic buildings and infrastructure all over the world including the London Olympics’ Aquatic Centre, Hong Kong’s first Zero Carbon building, the world’s biggest shopping mall in Dubai, the National Museum of the Marine Corps in the US and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
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Balfour Beatty offers a wide variety of opportunities within the Apprenticeship Scheme ranging from intermediate, to advanced, to higher level qualifications. These are suitable for schools leavers and post-A-level students who want to learn and earn on a structured training scheme and gain a nationally recognised qualification. Apprentices have the opportunity to continue their studies to gain a Foundation or Honours Degree while on the scheme at Balfour Beatty. Currently, Balfour Beatty employs 270 Apprentices across the UK and recruits around 150 additional Apprentices each year. Balfour Beatty is a member of ‘The 5% Club’, a UK industry-led initiative focused on creating momentum behind the recruitment of apprentices and graduates into the workforce. Chief Executive Leo Quinn was the founding member of the 5% Club. Balfour Beatty joined in December 2013, the first company in the infrastructure industry to join.
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The 5% Club works with UK employers and key influencers to inspire, educate and retain a growing body of people into “earn and learn” placements in order to increase the number of apprentices, sponsored students and graduates. The goal of The 5% Club is to increase the employment and career prospects of today’s youth and equip the UK with the skilled workforce it needs to safeguard Britain’s economy.
- Energy & Utility Skills Limited is the expert voice on workforce issues in the energy and utilities sector working with government, regulators and key audiences. We’re the provider of choice for guidance, employer solutions, setting, registering and assessing competency standards and bespoke consultancy. We help employers attract new talent, develop their workforces and assure a high level of competence across their businesses.
- The Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership is a collaboration of 27 energy and utilities sector employers. It emerged from the former Energy & Efficiency Industrial Partnership (EEIP) and builds on the work that the EEIP did between 2014 and 2016. Together, the Skills Partnership is leading UK workforce renewal and skills enhancement, creating an optimal safe operating environment to secure the right people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time, at an affordable cost.
- Members of the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership include Chief Executives from Anglian Water, Balfour Beatty, British Gas, Clancy Group, Cory Environmental, E.ON, Electricity North West, Energy & Utility Skills, FCC, McNicholas, Morrison Utility Services, National Grid, Northern Gas Networks, Northern Powergrid, Northumbrian Water, Scottish Power, Scottish Water, SGN, Siemens, Pennon Group/South West Water, SPIE, SSE, Sutton and East Surrey Water (acting for all water only companies and new entrants), Thames Water, UK Power Networks, Wales & West Utilities, Yorkshire Water. The work has been done in close partnership with economic regulation experts Oxera and Utility Week.
- The Workforce Renewal and Skills Strategy is available to download from the Energy & Utility Skills website at http://www.euskills.co.uk/sector-skills-strategy.
