As thousands of young people across the Highlands and Islands open their exam results today, the team behind the proposed National Infrastructure Skills Centre (NISC) has a message for every one of them: there has never been a better time to build a career in the Highlands & Islands.

Callum Mackintosh, Founding Director of Highlands and Islands Skills CIC (HI Skills), said results day should be a moment to look past the traditional routes and take stock of the scale of opportunity being built on the region’s doorstep.

“Whether today’s results opened the door you were hoping for or not, the Highlands and Islands are on the edge of something extraordinary,” said Mackintosh. “The A9 dualling, offshore wind, energy transmission, pumped storage hydro, thousands of new homes, every one of those projects needs skilled people to build it. That could be you. A career as a plant operator, wind turbine technician, scaffolder or steel fixer is not a fallback option. It’s a genuinely well-paid, in-demand role with many years of great work behind it.”

“It’s worth remembering there is no wrong path from here,” Mackintosh added. “Apprenticeship, further education, straight into work and learning on the job – there are many routes to a good career, and this region is full of successful people who started out exactly where you are today, took very different paths, and got there anyway.”

Highlands and Islands Enterprise has identified over 250 projects backed by more than £100 billion of investment across the Highlands and Islands over the next fifteen years, with demand for up to 16,000 trained workers a year at peak. HI Skills is proposing to establish the National Infrastructure Skills Centre at Torvean Quarry in Inverness, delivering apprenticeships and training courses for between 1,800 and 2,500 people a year in civil engineering, construction and renewable energy – plant, rope access, wind, scaffolding, tunnelling and civils among them.

Right now, people in the Highlands and Islands wanting to do apprenticeships in specialisms like wind energy, rope access, plant or tunnelling often have to leave the region for training to do it. That’s the gap NISC is built to close. “The conversation every young person in the region has had for a generation is: you have to leave the area to get on,” said Mackintosh. “We’re building something big to change that conversation – together with Scotlands largest provider of construction apprenticeships, the National Construction College, we’re bringing nationally accredited, specialist training onto home ground, so a career that matters doesn’t have to mean leaving the place you’re from.”

Jack Howell, director at HI Skills, has spent his career recruiting into offshore and renewables – placing people into some of the biggest projects in the region and beyond. “This isn’t just about opening envelopes today,” said Howell. “It’s about opening yourself up to a world of opportunity ahead.”

“I’ve never known so many opportunities in this area at once,” said Howell. “My advice to anyone opening results today: look beyond the trades and occupations you already know the names of. There are apprenticeships and entry roles right now, with excellent employers, paying more than people expect and most young people never hear about them because the industry hasn’t had to shout about it before. That’s changing.”

Dylan Spink, director at HI Skills and a civils project engineer, added: “The scale of what’s coming to this region in energy, transmission, housing, infrastructure – means the specialist & technical trades have never mattered more. If you’re someone who wants to make things and see the results of your work benefit the whole country, this is the moment.”

HI Skills has secured support from the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the National Construction College, Scotland’s largest provider of construction apprenticeships, and has attracted serious commercial interest from United Infrastructure, a major delivery partner for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.

You can’t be what you can’t see – anyone interested in a career in construction or infrastructure can visit goconstruct.org, or the National Construction College website to explore real-world training routes across more than 180 different roles.