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Jones Bros provides local trainee engineer with valuable work experience11th Apr 2012
Civil engineering firm Jones Bros is providing student engineer Alasdair MacInnes with a valuable insight into the construction of a wind farm.
Alasdair, 20, has been given the opportunity to gain hands-on work experience during construction of a 12-turbine wind farm on the Ormsary and Stronachullin estates in Argyll.
The third year civil engineering student at Glasgow University wrote to the firm to ask about work experience and was delighted to receive a positive response.
“I was really pleased to be invited on to the site and consider myself incredibly fortunate to help work on a scheme like this that is under construction on my doorstep,” said Alasdair from Tayvallich.
“It has been my dream to be a civil engineer for a long time and it is really great to be working with a well known company like Jones Bros.”
The Allt Dearg Community Wind Farm will generate 10MW, sufficient to power up to 6,000 homes in nearby Ardrishaig and Lochgilphead.
The £3m contract is set to bring huge benefits to the surrounding community with a portion of the wind farm profits going to an educational trust to provide bursaries to assist local youngsters into higher education.
Jones Bros began the project in January and it is expected to be complete by the end of this year.
Jones Bros project manager James McColl said: “We are really pleased that Alasdair got in touch with us and we were really glad to help as we are always keen to forge close links with the communities in which we are working.
“The contract is going extremely well and we’re confident that Alasdair will really reap the benefits of his work experience and hopefully will return at some point.”
The project is providing a welcome economic boost to the area with local firms being recruited as sub contractors, including civil engineering firm George McNaughton & Son, based in nearby Lochgilphead.
Jones Bros is also working alongside landowner Duncan Broadfoot, whose farm Stronachullin, provides access to the wind farm.
James Lithgow, of Ormsary is the grandson of leading industrialist and shipbuilder Sir James Lithgow, who installed the first hydroelectric station at Ormsary in 1919.
Jones Bros has been increasingly working on contracts in Scotland and, in the past two years, has opened two Scottish offices in Linlithgow and Inverness.
Founded in the 1950s and employing 270 people, the family-owned company has grown rapidly in the last decade. It is currently working on contracts in various sectors including landfill, highways, flood and marine defence and renewables around the UK.