Galloper’s O&M Manager Sean Chenery has become an Enterprise Adviser with Tendring Technical College, working with the school on a range of activities to help enhance career education for students and increase the awareness of  offshore wind and its many career options. Building a relationship with the school over time will give opportunities to advise on strategy and planning, to enhance the curriculum and to further promote STEM for careers. The role is part of the Essex Enterprise Adviser Network delivered by Essex County Council.

Galloper team members Lauren Rozier and Colleen Owens interviewed Year 12 students at Clacton County High School in June 2019 as part of a day designed to give the young people their first experience of a formal interview situation. Representing the offshore wind sector, Lauren and Colleen asked students about their skills, interests and ambitions during the full day event to help students prepare for the working world through realistic interview sessions.

Galloper’s O&M facility is based in Harwich and the organisation is keen to build relationships with local schools to further the awareness of offshore wind, the Galloper Wind Farm and careers in the offshore sector. One initiative has been to reach out to local secondary schools and offer students the chance to shadow our teams, depending on their interest. The first of these took place in March 2019, when two students from Tendring Technology College experienced a day at Galloper shadowing two engineering team members – Jack Blades, Asset Integrity Electrical Engineer and Simon Slingsby, Onshore Substation Site Manager – at both the Harwich base and the onshore substation at Leiston. Both students, Benjamin Moore and Connor Hayes, are studying maths, chemistry and physics and interested in a role within engineering. They were thrilled for the experience of seeing the base and how the substation works. This is an ongoing initiative with further visits to come.

Galloper is delighted to have participated in two STEM events at Ormiston Denes Academy in Lowestoft. The STEM events primarily focus on increasing pupils knowledge about Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects and careers.

In the summer of 2016 the Galloper Wind Farm construction team in Lowestoft were joined by two new team members with a passion for science and technology, as part of the inaugural launch of the East Coast Energy Internship scheme.

Felicity Levett (then 19) and Joel Pointon (then 17) were both students from Lowestoft Sixth Form College, and worked at the Galloper Offshore Construction Coordination Base in Lowestoft for a four-week period over the summer. They completed research and design projects related to the construction of the wind farm.

In 2016 the East Coast Energy Internship was launched by The Royal Academy of Engineering, The Ogden Trust and Suffolk County Council in association with Waveney District Council. It is part of a wider scheme called The Lowestoft Engineering Project, which provides STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) opportunities to pupils at 12 primary schools, four high-schools and two colleges in the town.

Plugging the gap between work experience and apprenticeships, the internship scheme is fully funded by the Ogden Trust and provides the students with a real and meaningful placement that utilises and enhances their STEM skills in a business environment.

At the time of the schemes launch and Joel and Felicity’s placements Peter Aldous, MP for Waveney, said “This is a great opportunity for Felicity and Joel to get a true understanding of the sector and to make their mark on this vitally important project that will contribute to a secure supply of low carbon energy.

“The east coast is the natural place for a scheme like this. The abundance of offshore wind activity here means great things for our economy and creates world-class training opportunities for our young people. It’s fantastic to see an initiative like this being trailblazed by Galloper in our region and it will hopefully set an example for other similar schemes in the future.”

Toby Edmonds, Galloper Wind Farm Project Director said: “Joel and Felicity were part of a group of five students from Lowestoft Sixth Form College, who piloted the programme in 2016. The internships were hosted by Galloper Wind Farm and James Fisher and Sons, as well as other key players from the energy sector. This is a fantastic initiative, creating the potential for local young people to gain valuable work experience from across the industry, in this area.

Intern Felicity, who went on to secure a place at the University of Keele to study Geoscience, said, “I’m was really excited to be involved in a project of this scale and importance. It was great to get hands-on experience of working from the Offshore Construction Coordination Base as part of a team but also learning more about how the build of the wind farm is coordinated from my hometown. This has helped confirm my ambitions to work in science or engineering after university too.”