SCHOOL leavers across the Highlands and Islands are being encouraged to build successful careers in the region, regardless of what their exam results are.
The team behind the proposed National Infrastructure Skills Centre (NISC) is encouraging youngsters receiving their results today to look past the traditional routes and take stock of the scale of opportunity being built on their doorstep.
Callum Mackintosh, founding director of Highlands and Islands Skills CIC (HI Skills), said, “Whether today’s results opened the door you were hoping for or not, the Highlands and Islands are on the edge of something extraordinary. The A9 dualling, offshore wind, energy transmission, pumped storage hydro, thousands of new homes: every one of those projects needs skilled people to build it. That could be you.
“A career as a plant operator, wind turbine technician, scaffolder or steel fixer is not a fallback option. It’s a genuinely well-paid, in-demand role with many years of great work behind it.
“It’s worth remembering there is no wrong path from here. Apprenticeship, further education, straight into work and learning on the job – there are many routes to a good career, and this region is full of successful people who started out exactly where you are today, took very different paths, and got there anyway.”
Highlands and Islands Enterprise has identified over 250 projects backed by more than £100 billion of investment across the Highlands and Islands over the next 15 years, with demand for up to 16,000 trained workers annually at peak. HI Skills is proposing to establish the National Infrastructure Skills Centre at Torvean Quarry in Inverness, delivering apprenticeships and training courses for between 1,800 and 2,500 people a year.
Currently, residents in the Highlands and Islands who wish to undertake apprenticeships in specialisms including wind energy, rope access, plant or tunnelling often have to leave the region for training to do it. It is this gap that NISC intends to close.
“The conversation every young person in the region has had for a generation is: you have to leave the area to get on,” Callum Mackintosh added. “We’re building something big to change that conversation – together with Scotland’s largest provider of construction apprenticeships, the National Construction College, we’re bringing nationally accredited, specialist training onto home ground, so a career that matters doesn’t have to mean leaving the place you’re from.”
HI Skills director Jack Howell has spent his career recruiting into the offshore and renewables sectors, placing candidates into some of the largest projects in the region and beyond. “This isn’t just about opening envelopes today,” he said. “It’s about opening yourself up to a world of opportunity ahead. I’ve never known so many opportunities in this area at once.
“My advice to anyone opening results today: look beyond the trades and occupations you already know the names of. There are apprenticeships and entry roles right now, with excellent employers, paying more than people expect and most young people never hear about them because the industry hasn’t had to shout about it before. That’s changing.”
Dylan Spink, director at HI Skills and a civils project engineer, added, “The scale of what’s coming to this region in energy, transmission, housing, infrastructure means the specialist and technical trades have never mattered more. If you’re someone who wants to make things and see the results of your work benefit the whole country, this is the moment.”
HI Skills has secured support from the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the National Construction College, and has attracted commercial interest from United Infrastructure, a major delivery partner for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.
Anyone interested in a career in construction or infrastructure can visit goconstruct.org, hi-skills.org, or the National Construction College website to explore training routes across more than 180 different roles.
