My name's Ian, I am the Mechanical Process Manager at Longannet Power Station, which is about 30 miles west of Edinburgh. And I've been with ScottishPower for 12 years.
I decided to work for ScottishPower due to the diversity that the business has. You have every facet of engineering, you have very different technologies, be it conventional power generation, renewables, and there's also the opportunity to develop as a general manager or into a financial stream within the trading business of wider ScottishPower.
The best part about my current role is the opportunity and diversity. No two days are the same. I can one day be in commercial negotiations for multi-million pound contracts, and the following day I can be up to my arms in oil and grease trying to solve a plant problem and increase the generation.
ScottishPower has supported my career and ambitions by giving me first class training in both general management and technical skills, and has given me life coaching, mentoring and opportunities for further advancement in my career. For me, working in a power station environment is seeing a shortage of skilled engineering resource, particularly in the controlled instrumentation environment, and I think there's plenty of opportunities within the company for someone that's interested in a career.
I would recommend ScottishPower to one of my friends, because the training opportunities within ScottishPower are absolutely first class, be it technical or general, and now we're an international company, and there's routes for international mobilisation.