Edwin James Group has strengthened its commitment to supporting clients in the utilities sector with the launch of a new Digital Academy. Located at the headquarters of group company, Peak Technology Solutions, it is equipped with the latest complex hardware and software platforms used by water utilities clients.
The industry skills gap is well documented and according to the World Economic Forum the demand for technological skills is expected to rise by more than 50 per cent in the next decade. The new academy will support further investment in apprenticeships and the training of existing staff in modern industrial technologies including Siemens/Rockwell PLCs, telemetry, IT/OT, cloud and virtualised platforms running control and monitoring software.
Michael Thomas, executive director at Peak, said: “The skills shortage is a challenge that affects the whole industry and is proving a brake on investment in the sector. We’re working hard to build capacity that will help our utilities customers to deliver AMP7 projects.
“Our Digital Academy will tackle the challenge by bridging the skills gap, delivering targeted industrial automation to a wider engineering audience. It allows Peak to recruit talent from diverse engineering backgrounds and augment their industrial digital skillset, adding further capacity to deliver AMP7 Water Utilities schemes.”
The new technology-focused training hub marks a further expansion of the group-wide EJ Academy Programme that provides learning and development opportunities to employees from apprentice to boardroom. The Academy programme has delivered over 50,000 hours of training in the last 12 months.
Peak holds a number of framework agreements in the utilities sector and recently announced its reappointment to the Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) Systems Integration Services framework.
