Balfour Beatty is looking to train a new generation of overhead power workers to meet a glut of work in the energy transmission sector
Though not quite in the clouds, I am very high up, thinking about the tensile strength of steel and the significance of each of us in the grand scheme of things. From my position, 40 metres above ground, on a tower – what the general public would call a pylon – I’m getting a taste of what it is like to be a power line maintenance worker. Despite the altitude, I feel safe in the hands of overhead linesperson trainers and assessors Sean and Owen Balfe at the Balfour Beatty Plant and Fleet Services site in Derby.
“There’s three key assets – overhead lines, underground cables and substations – and we deliver all three”
Iain Smith, Balfour Beatty
To the south-west loom the distinctive hyperboloid cooling towers of Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. It was commissioned back in 1968 but is the UK’s last remaining coal-fuelled power station, and is due to close in September 2024 as part of the UK’s move towards creating a greener energy grid.
This commitment to greener energy is why the Balfe cousins are teaching a cohort of new recruits. Construction’s labour shortage is not new. And while attention often centres on the workers needed to deliver high rises and homes – the structures that many of us interact with daily – infrastructure projects are also in acute need of fresh talent.
A May 2024 report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee laid bare the resource challenge. “To deliver the necessary energy infrastructure, appropriate supply chains and a sufficiently skilled workforce both need to be in place. Currently, the UK suffers from… a significant shortage of skills needed for the transition,” the report says.
These skills are a specialism of Balfour Beatty, which works mainly with the National Grid and SSE in the power infrastructure sector.
The company’s specialist power transmission and distribution (T&D) business unit has its work cut out, as the towers up and down the country – like the one I am suspended from – need refurbishment and reconditioning.
Back on the ground, I meet Iain Smith, Balfour Beatty’s power T&D new business and strategy director, and Vince Balfe, head of operations support. They set out the reasons behind the firm’s training drive. Balfe, also a cousin to Owen and Sean, says that Balfour Beatty currently has 200 to 250 overhead line (OHL) technicians. However, this can fluctuate depending on the market. He says that is a significant percentage of the number of overhead lines technicians nationally. “Industry-wide for the transmission network, there’s probably 800 people in the country with the ability to do the job,” he says. Balfe wants the number at Balfour Beatty alone to increase to 800 by 2027/28. Balfour Beatty T&D also employs 70 foundation operatives who will install new, or upgrade existing, foundations for the towers. The company is aiming to employ around 200 foundation operatives by the same deadline.
Future-proofing
Balfour Beatty’s Overhead Line Technician Trainee Programme is two years long and divided into modules: tower access and rescue; rope access; tower earthing; installing and replacing fittings; conductor stringing; and conductor compression jointing. The trainees spend eight weeks in Derby completing safety critical core and mandatory training. After this they spend all of their time developing their skills on site. Not all trainees are apprentices, but those who are receive a Level 3 qualification on completion and attend block release to Loughborough College for their technical certificate.
Balfe says that the UK power industry is fighting a battle to keep talent as other countries are also racing to reach net-zero targets and are hungry for skilled workers. New Zealand is aiming to generate 100 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2030, while Australia projects that by 2040, 96 per cent of its grid will run on renewables and storage. Balfe admits that Australia has hoovered up a lot of skilled resource from the UK as it’s hard to compete with sun, sand and surf.
A skilled workforce is needed to enable the transmission and distribution of power from point A to point B via wires and cables. Smith likens it to the road traffic network, with motorways representing transmission while A and B roads represent distribution. The poor state of these roads means that at times the grid becomes overloaded, and power gets stuck in a traffic jam – an actual gridlock. According to the Renewable Energy Forum in March 2024, windfarm operators are routinely paid to turn off their turbines and not generate energy. This is because a bottleneck in the grid means more energy is being generated than can be exported or consumed locally.
Network needs
The National Grid was born in 1935 when commercial operation began of the national 132kV electric power transmission in the UK, and became the first integrated national grid in the world. By 1950, the electricity network was not able to meet consumers’ future demand so work started on a 12-year project to upgrade its capacity to carry 400kV.
But this network is ageing, with towers having a lifespan of 80 years and conductors, insulators and fittings just 40. It also needs upgrading to increase the amount of power that can flow through an overhead line, while facing two interlinked challenges. The first is a 2021 commitment made by the last government to fully decarbonise the electricity system by 2035. Meanwhile, demand is expected to double over that same period. The new Labour administration is promising “clean energy by 2030.”
As a society we are more likely to be driving hybrid or electric cars instead of petrol or diesel-powered vehicles. When the gas boilers in our homes reach the end of their lives, they are often replaced with heat pumps that run on electricity. And the widespread adoption of AI into our everyday tasks puts even more strain on the grid as AI is generated in power-hungry data centres. Energy security is another driver of investment
in the grid.
The previous Conservative government set up the Powering up Britain programme in spring 2023, which highlighted a need to reduce reliance on foreign imports of fossil fuels. Much of our renewable energy is generated by offshore windfarms in places like the Scottish coast. However, these are many miles away from the population centres that consume the power they produce. In April 2022, the British Energy Security Strategy (BESS) was published. It set a target to achieve up to 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. Currently just 13.9 gigawatts of extra capacity has been fully commissioned. BESS says reaching the 50 gigawatt goal could support up to 90,000 direct and indirect jobs in the UK.
Smith says: “To transport power from A to B you can send it on towers, overground, or you can put it on cables underground. Then at certain locations, to step the voltage down or up, or switch into a different circuit, you have a substation. There’s three key assets – overhead lines, underground cables and substations – and we deliver all three.”
Above ground, Balfour Beatty may refurbish or reconduct existing overhead lines , or build new ones. At any one time the contractor’s power T&D unit will be working on 100 to 180 projects or schemes. This could be a substation, cabling or OHL project. The business unit is expecting to build 400km of new lines and refurbish another 400km of existing lines by 2030.
To give an idea of the scale of the task ahead, Balfour Beatty is installing an overhead line from Beauly, 13 miles west of Inverness, to Peterhead, the most easterly town in Scotland. It is currently in the design stage and construction will commence in 2026.
“That’s 200 kilometres,” Smith says. “So that’s 600 new towers to be installed in all of those locations, the access roads that need to go in, the wires needed to connect them.” According to Scottish and Southern Electricity Network (SSEN) Transmission, the new line will require four new substations and/or converter stations at either end of the line and at Blackhillock and New Deer.
Then there’s a project on the Isle of Skye in the north west of Scotland, where the existing lines, constructed between 1956 and 1989, are reaching the end of their operational life. Balfour Beatty was awarded the first phase of the £690m Skye 132kV reinforcement project for SSEN Transmission. Once finished, the project will ensure the supply of secure and clean electricity to homes and businesses across the Hebrides and West Highlands.
A few weeks after my visit, the Labour party wins the UK general election. I ask how Smith and Balfe feel about the new government and what it means for the power industry. They tell me that the question remains whether the new government’s acceleration of the switch to renewable energy is achievable. “There are many factors that will influence this, including the investment required, planning consents and supply chain capacity,” they say.
To spell out what needs to be done, Balfour Beatty’s human resource director for transport, energy and power major projects Maxine Wheldon put out a plan in late July. In it she says seven actions are needed to ensure the power grid has enough skilled workers, including upfront funding and investing in core engineering skills.
Reminiscing on my time at the top of the tower, I can visualise where the people I’ve met fit into the grand scheme of power transmission and distribution. There are uncountable parts, wires, cables, substations, towers, turbines and plants that keep electricity flowing. And all these components are installed and managed by a group of skilled, technical professionals, with Balfour Beatty doing its best to power up the numbers.
Marcus Jones, trainee overhead line technician
This job is future proof. And there’s room for development. When I first came in, I knew about the industry, but I didn’t know about the hierarchy, the progression, what other roles that could lead to. I knew there was the physical side, which is being a linesman, and then you’ve got the office side, which is being an engineer. But I’m more of a hands-on person so I chose the linesman route. I try to stay fit so this was perfect for me. I worked in logistics management for a few years, both air and land. Before starting this training at Balfour Beatty, I was a general operative which gave me a very firm foundation of what happens on site. The challenging part is connecting the dots, as while you’re on site you get fed a bit of information about different things but you don’t know how they will connect. I worked with scissor lifts before. The highest I’ve been is about 20 metres. I was a bit wary of heights but the challenge is what motivates me to climb even higher. No vertigo, I’m completely fine. We do a bit of classroom and then we do the physical side. The classroom gives us an idea of what we’re going to be doing and then the practical fills in the blanks. In any environment when you’re learning something new, you just have to have the will to learn and listen to the more experienced people.
Vernon Poppleton, trainee overhead line technician
My friend has worked for Balfour Beatty for 15 years, so I’ve always known about the job. And 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. My goal is just to work my way up as much as possible. I was in the Army for 10 years, then I ran my own spray foam installation company. Over the past six months, work has been quite quiet, so I decided to do something different while I’m young and fit enough. The physical aspects are quite challenging, the heat especially. Learning in that environment, it takes a bit of thought to try and take it all in, but it’s been good. It’s definitely been worthwhile. I’ve always worked in construction. The hands-on side, it’s quite straightforward for me, but this climbing side was quite alien. I’ve worked in MEWPs [mobile elevated working platforms], but this is my first time working at heights like this. We do a little bit of classroom and then we do the physical side and then we do a bit of classroom so it’s mixed up, which is good. I don’t think you can really prepare for it. You just have to have the mindset that it’s what you want to do.
