The digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Learning Solutions, has become a member of an organisation intended to increase supply chain competitiveness and productivity to the renewable energy sector in Scotland.
Known as DeepWind, the organisation aims to maximise its members’ involvement in new initiatives, encouraging innovation in the supply chain to create new products and services for the rapidly expanding offshore wind market in Scotland.
The DeepWind cluster currently has 686 members representing developers, supply chain companies, academia and local government. It’s part of The Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP), a £100m programme of industry support measures – funded by offshore wind developers as part of the UK’s Offshore Wind Sector Deal – that aims to increase UK supply chain companies’ productivity and competitiveness.
One of the key themes of the UK’s Offshore Wind Sector Deal is to increase the productivity and competitiveness of the supply chain to help achieve the UK’s target of generating some 60% of its energy requirements from wind power by 2030. Progress towards this target is being reviewed at the Scottish Renewables Offshore Wind Conference 2022, taking place in Glasgow on 8th and 9th March, which brings together experts from across industry, supply chain and stakeholders.
Wendy Edie, eCom’s Managing Director, explained, “eCom provides the people skills that employers in the renewables sector need for their organisations to be increasingly productive and resilient in this new age. We focus on helping learners embrace the coming changes to industry, job roles and society by, among other things, embedding lifelong learning, problem solving capabilities, adaptability and resilience.
“Within our portfolio of digital learning and assessment services are development materials that play key roles in re-skilling the workforce in the skills they need to be productive, professional members of the renewable energy sector’s workforce, as well as up-skilling those already in that sector. This will help people to get a job, keep a job and get the next job in the rapidly growing renewable energy sector.”
Susan Gearing, the senior energy sector specialist at eCom Learning Solutions, added, “Given the need to reduce humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels because of global warming and climate change among other things, renewables such as solar, wind and wave power – and wind counts for 73% of all renewable output in Scotland – are key for the future of the UK’s and other countries’ energy industries. eCom has worked recently with a company that works on wind turbines and has supported that company’s digital training although, due to client confidentiality, we can’t share their details.
“All the key players in the energy sector have an energy transition document and an energy transition target to make their activities more environmentally friendly,” she continued. “There’s a huge amount of work going on in the background as the strategic and operational plans to achieve that are worked on.
“The number of change projects, new processes and procedures that will come from this will create a plethora of learning and eCom’s goal is to support the energy industry to get that right first time and put employee learning and development front and centre of those projects.”