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UTILITY WEEK | 10TH - 16TH FEBRUARY 2017 | 17 The wind farm began construction in August 2015. Local communities in the area will also directly benefit from the project. Engie will provide either a guaranteed annual payment of £5,000 for each megawatt of installed generation capacity or 10 per cent of the profits (whichever is the higher value) as a community benefit fund. If you have an asset or project you would like to see featured in this slot, email: paul.newton@fav-house.com or call 01342 332085. Operations & Assets Pipe up Neil Snell I t's no secret that all utility companies are facing spe- cific skills challenges. Apprenticeships offer a strong solution, but as an industry, creating apprenticeships that deliver competent engineers with the right skills is one of our biggest challenges. That's where we hope the government's new Trailblazer apprenticeships, which put employers in the 'driving seat', will come into their own. There will always be operational and financial pressures to manage, but the quality of the output will always be our number one priority. The nature of gas means our workforce must be highly competent; we can't afford to cut corners. This is perhaps where our apprenticeships have less distance to travel than other industries to meet the Trailblazer standards. Even so, moving to the new standards has not been an easy task and over the past year, in my role as chair of the Gas Network Skills Forum, I've been working closely with the other UK gas distribution network operators and Energy & Utility Skills to develop the new standards for work on the <7bar network. We have already developed and published the Gas Network Team Leader standard at Level Two to give a Trailblazer apprenticeship equivalent to the Network Construction Operations (NCO) Level Two qualifications for Service-laying and Repair activities. We have also developed a Gas Network Crasperson Level Three standard with the optional pathways of Emergency Response, Network Maintenance (Pressure Management) and Network Maintenance (Electrical & Instrumentation). We will also develop a standard for the maintenance of high-pressure (steel) gas pipelines. Trailblazers will become commonplace across the gas sector in 2017 and will progressively replace the existing apprenticeship frameworks. The biggest difference will be on how competence is assessed. Emphasis will be placed on 'end-point assessment', where candidates have to demonstrate they can apply all their learning in realistic working environments. As a company, we generally welcome the move to end-point assessment; it will help ensure our apprentices have all the necessary knowledge and skills to do their job – recognising of course that they will still be relatively inexperienced. Apprenticeships in our industry have always been of a high quality and pretty robust, but some are too generic and don't meet the needs of specific roles. The opportu- nity to review and improve them came at the right time, but it has been an onerous task and one we would have struggled to achieve without the expertise of Energy & Utility Skills. Time will tell if it has been worth the effort. Neil Snell, head of training and development, SGN "End-point assessment will help ensure our apprentices have all the necessary know- ledge and skills to do their job." Trailblazer apprenticeships put employers in the 'driving seat'