Professor Alan Richardson, Managing Director of ScottishPower's Power Systems business, has been honoured on the world stage for his contribution to the electricity supply industry.

At a ceremony in Atlanta on Wednesday Professor Richardson was presented with a "Lifetime Achievement Award" sponsored by the magazine 'Transmission & Distribution World'. The ceremony took place during a conference for professionals in the world-wide electricity "wires" business.

Professor Richardson told delegates that the world was watching with great interest how the electricity industry would develop in the States, where the concept of customer choice - to be fully implemented in the UK next year - was only starting to emerge.

Professor Richardson, talking of his own experiences since joining the Glasgow-based multi utility ScottishPower six years ago, said consolidation within the UK electricity industry and the deregulation of gas and telecoms sectors had paved the way for the emergence of multi-utility offerings to customers.

"This is the future of the utility businesses and in ScottishPower many of my engineers who work on electricity are now at the same time developing gas infrastructures and dealing with water and telecoms too", he said.

Professor Richardson said people thought that the forces let lose at privatisation in the UK would create considerable restructuring - but few could have foreseen what had actually happened, with US utilities buying up the English distribution businesses, amalgamation of water and electricity companies and only one UK electricity company, ScottishPower, acquiring another, Manweb, (and subsequently going on to take over Southern Water).

While competition had brought additional income for the companies, it had also led to reduced prices and increased quality of service for customers, he said.

There had also been major gains for the economy. ScottishPower's decision to upgrade its interconnector to England and Wales, for example, and to build another, to Northern Ireland, would create jobs in the coal industry and provide a low cost and high quality power supply attractive to inward investors, he said.

Professor Richardson told the conference that the globalisation of the electricity supply industry now underway would bring a new set of challenges deriving from regional differences in working practices and in political and regulatory frameworks, among other things.

"How to approach these issues is not usually taught at University which is why I am particularly pleased to be closely involved with the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow where as visiting professor I can, in some small way, draw attention to the wider skill set required to be an effective engineering manager in future", Professor Richardson added.