Subsea UK and OPITO have each been awarded part of a £2 million-fund aimed at attracting vital new entrants into the industry and helping people to diversify their skills.
Scotland’s leading diver training facility, The Underwater Centre in Fort William, has also secured a share of The Energy Challenge Fund, set up to help tackle the current skills shortage in the oil and gas industry.
The training is aimed at helping people to gain the qualifications necessary for working in oil and gas, including the subsea sector, as well as renewables and micro-renewables.
The oil and gas industry is experiencing shortages of skills across a number of key areas. A recent survey of Subsea UK members revealed that the subsea industry in the UK needs around 10,000 people in the next 12 months to cope with current and short-term future demand.
“The funds will go towards further developing a subsea engineer conversion course which provides companies with the course framework, tools and resources to successfully train engineers from other sectors to become subsea engineers,” said Neil Gordon, chief executive of Subsea UK, which represents the industry around the UK with over 250 members. “Subsea UK has had great success with recruitment initiatives targeted at military personnel and these will continue with the new funding available. We will also work with Robert Gordon University to update and enhance a suite of on-line learning modules for subsea and deliver a subsea apprenticeship scheme primarily focused on ensuring SMEs get access to apprentices.”
OPITO, the body responsible for ensuring the industry has a competent, safe and sustainable workforce supply both now and in the future is leading the efforts to address the lack of up-skills training to capture transferable skills.
“The mid-gap of maturity and experience is where the problem lies. Widening the pool of talent available to the industry is essential if the recruitment difficulties identified by industry employers are to be addressed,” said policy affairs director at OPITO Gillian Black. “OPITO responded to this challenge by creating a fast-track Transformation Training Programme (TTP) for up-skilling workers with an established knowledge base and experience of other industries that are potentially facing redundancy or reduced opportunities. By developing their existing skills to suit the oil and gas industry, there is great opportunity to have suitably skilled, competent workers trained in a relatively short space of time.”
