Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind attends John Spendluffe Technical College Careers Fair
Last week, some of the Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind team met with the students of the John Spendluffe Technical College in Alford to raise awareness about the wide-ranging opportunities there are to work in offshore wind. This was the second year that the team attended the Careers Fair. Over 600 young people visited the Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind stand to speak with the team and learn about the various roles that are needed to build an offshore wind farm. There were questions galore about the various routes to entry for the different roles and what it was like to work in offshore wind.
Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind Engineers, Garrett Roche and Chetna Sapru, speak to the students at John Spendluffe Technology College about careers in offshore wind at their careers day on March 20th, 2024.
Chetna Sapru recently joined Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind as a project engineer. “Having previously worked in the oil and gas sector, moving to offshore wind was a great opportunity for me be a part of the energy transition. It was great to talk to the young people about my experiences and give them a first-hand account of what it is like to work on what will be one of the biggest offshore wind farms in the UK. There are a wide variety of roles available and I hope that a few students were inspired to explore opportunities to work in the growing renewable power sector.”
The UK is a global leader in offshore wind power with more operational offshore wind farms than any other country in the world. According to the Crown Estate, at the beginning of 2024 the UK had 14.7GW of offshore wind generation capacity installed, providing 14% of the UK entire electricity needs. The UK government has an aim to add another 35.3GW of generation from offshore wind by 2050 to help power the country with renewable electricity and reduce our dependence on imported oil and gas. The current workforce stands at 32,000 in the UK but this is forecast to increase to 104,000 by 2030. Potentially, some of these roles could be filled by the young people of Lincolnshire.
“Studies have shown that young people start to form an idea of their future career earlier than you may expect, so it is really important that we raise awareness about the wide-ranging employment options to help students focus their studies in the right areas to keep their options open” said Jenny Marsden, Communications Manager at Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind.
“Events like this are so important to raise aspirations and we were very grateful to be able to contribute to the day. We would like to thank the team at the John Spendluffe Technical College for all the great work they do in helping to nurture and inspire the innovators, technicians, scientists and engineers of the future. We would also like to thank the students at John Spendluffe for their professionalism, curiosity and excellent questions”.
Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind is currently in development phase, but if consent is granted will enter construction in 2026-27 and could produce first power in 2030. Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) will be a key theme of the Community Benefits Fund that Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind plans to launch next year. If you represent a STEM organisation active in East Lindsey, Boston or South Holland and are interested to work with Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind, please get in touch: contact@outerdowsing.com.