In 2020, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) commissioned Energy & Utility Skills to develop and deliver a Hydrogen Competency Framework as part of the Hy4Heat programme. The successful completion of this work is detailed in a new report published today.
The work done by Energy & Utility Skills was underpinned by three key pillars:
- Collaboration
Driving growth in engagement levels across the industry - Scalability
Designing the framework for both initial trials and any future national rollout - Safety
The framework ensures engineers will have all the skills, knowledge and understanding they need
The Hydrogen Competency Framework establishes a series of sequential components designed to ensure any future work done to install and maintain new hydrogen appliances will be completed safely, to the highest standards, and will only be carried out by hydrogen competent, Gas Safe Registered engineers.
The resulting outputs of the design development stages are:
- A Comparative Analysis of Hydrogen and existing hydrocarbon gases
- A Skills Matrix that translates the analysis into skills, knowledge and understanding
- An Interim Hydrogen Technical Standard that defines acceptable parameters and requirements for hydrogen installation work
- A Hydrogen Training Specification that will enable training course consistency and facilitate industry recognition
- An independent Hydrogen Assessment Module that will facilitate the addition of a hydrogen competence category on the Gas Safe Register
The Hydrogen Competency Framework is a significant success for the UK Gas Sector. This scalable framework will evolve and expand as the roll out of hydrogen into larger commercial applications occurs, ahead of Hydrogen Apprenticeships becoming a reality. In the meantime, it delivers the means to ensure the competence of engineers who will pioneer the transition to a hydrogen-fuelled gas industry.
View the full report, including links to the resulting outputs, here.