The UK’s Electrical Infrastructure Upgrade

For Scotland, this meant “that all SSEN Transmission projects identified by the Electricity System Operator (the ‘ESO’) as required to meet 2030 offshore wind targets will now be taken forward as part of the ASTI framework.”[2]

These works may see SSEN’s investment in this decade reach £24bn. Projects will span the length and breadth of Scotland and beyond, including two 2GW subsea high-voltage links between Peterhead and England, linking Fort Augustus to Skye and the Argyll 275kV strategy.

ASTI Partners

Supporting the ASTI delivery programme, in November 2023, SSEN launched its Delivery Charter, which included 11 partners to deliver £10bn of investment: Balfour Beatty, Burns & McDonnell, Hitachi Energy, IQA Elecnor, Linxon, OMSI, Morrison Energy Services, Murphy, NKT, Seimens BAM, and Wood.[3]

Skills Shortage

In the North of Scotland, the ASTI project will directly contribute to the connection of up to 11GW of new offshore wind capacity. This is enough power to supply more than 10mn homes, and be a key contributor to supporting 20,000 jobs across the UK, of which 9,000 will be in Scotland.[4]

According to the Scottish Government’s 2022 Census, there were 2.6m people working in Scotland. The Highlands of Scotland has a working population of around 122,000 with an unemployment rate of around 2.5%[5], rising to 3.8% in December 2025[6]

The move towards a decarbonised economy, investment in infrastructure, and the challenge to meet the Government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan create huge employment and re-skilling opportunities, but, as we see in Highland, there is minimal capacity to meet the skilled labour to deliver the ASTI programme.

Up-Skilling

To support the long term move towards decarbonised infrastructure, and specifically electricity transmission, SSEN continues to invest in its Perth based training centre, committing to 600 ‘earn as you learn’ roles between now and 2030[7].

SSEN’s commitment and investment in the future of its skills base is a leading example of ensuring the sustainability of skills to maintain the grid, but, this can only be a part of the wider labour supply picture.

Managing Skills

We caught up with Jack and Dylan, founding director’s of CHANCE Recruitment, to understand a little more on managing labour supply to such a geographically diverse project, to be delivered in such a short time.

Jack explained “probably the biggest challenge is the procurement structure – as the owner operator, SSEN have committed to their ASTI Delivery Charter, creating a broad team of specialists, from design to commissioning. Each of these Delivery Charter partners has an obligation to SSEN, and to their workforce, shareholders and stakeholders, to deliver on time, and on budget. But the labour and skills pool is fixed, small, and localised. Each installation partner, each commissioning partner, are all searching in the same spaces for the same resources. This creates a race to secure those resources, whilst also pushing costs up. That’s great for the workforce, but not so great for the bill payer who will ultimately pay for the upgrades in their tariffs.”

This paints a stark picture of under supply within the skills market to achieve delivery in the next 4 years. Dylan posed the question: “what if the labour pool could be managed? What if SSEN and the ASTI Delivery Charter partners planned the works around skills, as a single project? If we could imagine a central labour planning committee, a neutral body that coordinates manpower, logistics, every skill and every resource needed to deliver those skills to each phase of the project, in each location?”

Jack and Dylan detailed out a model that could help to deliver. A central project hub, located in Inverness, that:

• is led by a neutral management team;
• incorporates the manpower planning function of all works across all of the delivery partners and their specialist supply chains, linking directly into each project phase; and
• reports directly to SSEN

In this model, a ‘flying squad’ of specialists can be managed across key installation, commissioning, and energising phases. Working across the whole of the scope, increasing productivity, reducing market pressure, reducing supporting infrastructure demand can remove bottlenecks whilst also cooling market rate inflation.

Based in Inverness, CHANCE Recruitment is a specialist manpower management and supply partner, focused across the energy industry: renewables, construction & infrastructure, and oil & gas. 

[1] Ofgem, Decision on accelerating onshore electricity transmission investment,

[2] Ofgem approves transmission investments required for 2030 Government targets

[3] Pathway to 2030: SSEN Transmission launches new Delivery Charter ahead of major electricity transmission upgrades

[4] Pathway to 2030: SSEN Transmission launches new Delivery Charter ahead of major electricity transmission upgrades

[5] Employment, unemployment and economic inactivity in Highland

[6] STV News, Scotland’s unemployment rate rises as economic inactivity falls

[7] SSEN: Powering the future: SSEN Transmission commits to 600 ‘earn as you learn’ roles between now and 2030