ABOUT 150 engineering jobs could be created in the Tees Valley during the next three years after Amec won a major share in a £500m contract with power company National Grid.

Engineering group Amec yesterday secured a deal to upgrade overhead power lines and underground cables across the West of England and Wales, in consortium with industrial companies Babcock International and Mott Macdonald.

And Amec, which has its headquarters in Darlington, said as a result of the deal it hoped to recruit up to 150 new linesmen at its training school, in the town's Haughton Road.

Amec's share in the deal is about £237.5m, and is the second major contract for the Darlington industrial base since the start of the year, after it won a "significant" deal to work on London's Thameslink rail line in January.

It is also the second multi-million pound deal Amec has struck with National Grid, after winning a £280m five-year alliance contract to upgrade gas pipelines along the M1 corridor in February 2005.

Amec employs about 1,000 people in the North-East including 750 in Darlington, which houses the UK's first dedicated overhead linesman training school.

The award of the National Grid deal follows the company naming the Amec, Babcock and Mott consortium as its preferred partner for the work last year.

The contract, which officially commenced yesterday, will enable new infrastructure, such as wind farms and other electricity generation plants, to be connected to the grid.

It will also cover enhancement and replacement of the existing infrastructure to ensure the continuing safe and reliable operation of the high-voltage electricity network.

This year, the work will include 28 schemes on 14 projects covering the whole of Wales, and an area of England from Heysham Ring, in Lancashire, to Lea Marston in Warwickshire.

Tush Doshi, Amec's operations director, said it was a major contract for all of the firms involved over a wide geographical area. "Helping the energy sector to deliver secure and efficient supplies is a major part of Amec's strategy and vitally important to the future well-being of the UK," he said.