November 4, 2022

Training providers and wind energy employers take a step forward, together

The next generation of wind turbine technicians were placed front and centre at GWO’s Safety & Training Forum, as training providers and employers debated the best approach to onboard thousands of new people.

Around 100 guests attended this unique event, with representatives from more than 50 GWO training companies and more than a dozen OEMs and owner operators experiencing a day of inspiration, dialogue, insights, and networking.

Taking place at GWO headquarters in Central Copenhagen, guests spent time workshopping the key challenges and opportunities presented by the new GWO Entry Level Framework, to ensure a successful roll-out is achieved.

Jakob Lau Holst, CEO of Global Wind Organisation, said: “Our understanding of the industry’s needs for a future workforce is becoming more sophisticated, but we must bring all our stakeholders together to ensure something ambitious like the Framework achieves the buy-in that it deserves. We made sure at the Forum that both providers of training and the end users – our members – were able to see one another, eye to eye, and understand our shared vision to bring entry level technicians into the industry, according to the Framework’s recommended training guidelines.”

This theme was discussed and dissected by training providers in the workshop streams running across the afternoon. Moderated by industry leads and subject matter experts, the Safety & Training Forum was committed to ensuring open dialogue.

Forum attendees identified the following themes from the Framework as most relevant to their organisations:

·       Making the wind technician career attractive

·       Creating a clear definition of the wind technician role to make hiring decisions easier

·       Building networks with other training providers/ OEM’s/ governments to deliver the Framework together

·       OEM’s making the Framework a recruitment requirement

The finale for the day was the GWO Safety & Training Awards. For the second time, GWO gave well-deserved praise to the great practice of training teams, instructors and the very best the network has to offer.

The winners for training team 2022 were:

Northern Europe: Relyon Nutec, UK

APAC: Fire and Safety Ltd, Australia

EMEA: Tesicnor, Spain

Americas: Tech Safety Lines, USA