ESO races to fill skills gap before summer transition

National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) is seeking to fill another 150 roles before it takes on an expanded role this summer.

The organisation’s new chief operating officer Kayte O’Neill gave Utility Week an exclusive update on recruitment plans in preparation for the transition into the National Energy System Operator (NESO). This will see the company take on gas planning responsibility, as well as an official government advisory role, regional energy strategic planning and responsibilities across planning, resilience and digitalisation among others.

To enable it to perform these new roles, the ESO expects to grow from its current c1,000-strong workforce to an organisation employing 1,800 by the autumn.

Some of these roles will come from staff in currently shared service areas, such as HR, finance and procurement, moving across from National Grid when NESO becomes an independent public corporation. The organisation is also recruiting people to second within National Gas over the next few months.

O’Neill said that c450 entirely new roles will be needed by the time the NESO is launched. She added that “nearly 300” of these have already been filled.

She said: “We’ve cast the net pretty wide in looking for the talent we need to bring into the organisation. Of course, we have traditionally been a very electricity focussed business so we have been building our skills in new areas.

“We’ve been bringing in people in the planning space, modellers, data scientists and people with really strong engagement skills, particularly regional skills. We’ve also been trying to build some of that whole-system, cross-vector knowledge, so we’ve been looking for people who have got gas capability, people who’ve been looking at hydrogen CCUS over recent years and also those experienced in systems thinking.”

O’Neill officially took on her own role as COO last week, which sees her chair the NESO operations executive committee. This new six-strong group sits alongside the executive committee led by executive director Fintan Slye and is responsible for the delivery of operational transformation within the organisation, specifically aspects of the business plan such as objectives and costs.

The other members of the operations executive are:

• Julian Leslie – strategic energy planning director and chief engineer
• Craig Dyke – systems operations director
• David Wildash – interim engineering and customer solutions director
• Audrey Ramsay – interim resilience director
• Matt Magill – interim markets director

O’Neill said the organisation is in “great shape” to hit its deadline of this summer to fully transition away from National Grid and become the NESO.

For more insight into the creation of the NESO, read the full interview with O’Neill in Utility Week’s digital edition, available from Thursday.

You can also explore our analysis of the myriad roles the NESO is expected to take on here.