We’ve spoken before about the raft of different reports in the last 12 months speculating over the Industry’s projected skills needs over the next two, three – four years and beyond.
Not only do these figures fluctuate significantly but they don’t tell us with any certainty or clarity what we really need to know, such as how many apprentices we need each year, which disciplines are experiencing the biggest growth or where we need capital investment to increase training capacity.
Opito is leading and managing this report on behalf of industry and delivering it in collaboration with the following critical partners:
- Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce
- Decom North Sea
- Engineering Construction Industry Training Board
- Energy North
- International Association of Drilling Contractors North Sea Chapter
- Offshore Contractors Association
- Oil & Gas UK
- Subsea UK
Very positive talks are underway around the need to deliver one consistent, accurate report to industry and I’m sure that most of you will have heard or read that we will shortly be looking for industry’s input into a newly informed market intelligence report.
This report will pin-point the immediate needs of the industry around skills, training and recruitment and it will help provide a consistent message to all stakeholders.
As an industry-wide resource, this will provide valuable data on how the skills landscape is changing and where the pinch points are going forward.
It is only with your commitment, however, that this will be the valuable tool it should be. Only with your participation will we gain the accurate intelligence that will allow us to develop the first ever Skills Strategy for Oil and Gas.
From this will evolve a Skills Action Plan that we can all believe in and that will truly support your needs.
For example, it will provide the data to allow the industry to plan and invest in training provision. It will help inform government on future policy – and it will ensure individuals are well informed about real job opportunities with employers focused on specific skills needs.
We intend to launch a Skills Charter and will be asking you, the industry, to sign up as a mark of your commitment to tackling the skills issue once and for all.
This will ensure that industry engagement remains at the heart of the skills agenda, but will also seek to guarantee that the solutions developed through the skills forums – the solutions which are developed by the industry for the industry – are put into practice.
We want to see the industry buy-in to the charter by having senior representatives from all organisations put their name to it and support the development of the Skills Action Plan by having the people with the power and the ability to effect change involved in the forums.
Vitally, we want to look at innovative ways for this to work. The barriers are well understood – what we now have to do is look at how with shared resources, we can collectively achieve the big prize that is up for grabs here.
Larraine Boorman is the managing director of Opito UK
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