Reaching new heights at Balfour Beatty’s overhead line training facility

Balfour Beatty has featured in Construction News, exploring how the company is actively training a new generation of overhead power workers to help tackle the construction and infrastructure industry's well-documented skills shortage and to meet the demands of tomorrow, as the UK moves towards creating a greener energy grid.

Construction News visited Balfour Beatty’s training hub in Raynesway, Derby, to scale the training towers, find out more about the company's unique Overhead Line Technician Trainee Programme and how it's powering up the number of overhead line experts in the industry. 

The programme, which is two years long and divided into modules, provides trainees with safety critical core and mandatory expertise as well as the necessary qualifications to jump-start their careers, so that they are able to help deliver on the vast number of energy transmission projects in the pipeline. 

Talking about the training provided, Vernon Poppleton, Trainee Overhead Line Technician, said: “What attracted me is that it's future-proof, because electricity is a big thing that's going to get bigger. Also, there's progression to work your way up.” 

Discussing the company’s proactive steps to address the deficit facing the industry, Vince Balfe, Head of Operations Support, explains: “Industry-wide for the transmission network, there’s probably 800 people in the country with the ability to do the job... We want the number at Balfour Beatty alone to increase to 800 by 2027/28.” Read the full article on pages 32-36 here. Or find out more about the careers Balfour Beatty offers here.