If it isn’t fuel prices or the credit crunch, it’s something else. Yes, I make no apologies for dragging it out one more time, but the skills shortage is in the news again. This time, however, there’s a positive note to sound as CBI director general, Richard Lambert launches the E3 Academy* (www.e3academy.org), an engineering industry initiative to encourage more students to choose engineering related degree courses.
E3 (a shorthand for ‘Electrical Energy Engineering’) is pretty well focused on energy conversion technology – motors, inverters, power electronics, drives - that sort of thing. It is partially modelled on the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET’s) Power Academy, which has successfully encouraged leading universities and major power sector organisations to develop an engineering scholarship fund, providing students of relevant disciplines with support and finance throughout their university courses.
At the launch, Control Techniques technology vice president, Professor Bill Drury (no stranger to the pages of DPA) said pointedly that it was time to stop moaning about engineering skills shortages and the perceived ‘status of engineers in the UK, and do something positive about it. The decline in the numbers of school leavers opting for engineering is a very sobering 15-20 per cent per year. Even more sobering is the fact that between 2001 and 2006 the numbers of electrical engineering students declined by 45 per cent. It’s the slippery slope when so many youngsters go for careers that offer ‘softer options’, he says.
But the recruitment shortfall in engineering related studies is not just a UK malady. They have similar problems in France, Italy and Germany (would you believe), and – most surprising, given that the numbers of undergraduates in engineering are counted in their hundreds of thousands – in the developing economies too. So, the easy option of going overseas to attract young engineering talent with the promise of a reasonable salary and good working conditions, just won’t wash. This has become a global problem.
Richard Lambert cited a recent survey by his organisation, which revealed that more than three quarters of engineering companies expect a shortfall in recruitment this year – and all the while they pursue that diminishing pot of foreign candidates to meet their needs. The priority for companies, he says, is to do with skills training and education and there are two main themes to this: numeracy and literacy and tackling the shortfall in the numbers of people coming through with the basic relevant skills.
He places at least some of the blame for the lack of engineering recruits at the foot of the companies themselves. It is up to companies to help generate the supply, he says. Companies are good at hiring but not at retaining these staff. For that reason, he welcomes the E3 initiative; it may not be the solution, but at least it’s a start in the right direction.
Les Hunt
Editor
*The E3 Academy has the initial support of the Universities of Newcastle and Nottingham and the following six companies: Control Techniques, Converteam, Cummins Generator Technologies, GE Aviation, Parker SSD and Siemens Automation & Drives.
A number of readers responded to my last newsletter introduction on the subject of working from home Click here. Here are just a couple:
From Martin Wilson: “I’ve been muttering about this for years. Why is it that our leaders can only come up with ideas that involve taxing us more, such as congestion charging and charging for parking at work, rather than encouraging working from home?”
... and from John Houston: “The National Work from Home Day probably passed most of us by unnoticed, but there is a fundamentally serious point that you have described very convincingly. Ecologically and environmentally, there is no question that home working impacts favourably in several ways on the environment. While the reduction in direct fuel emissions from transport and infrastructure must be offset by a slight increase in energy usage at home, the net savings are great.
“With modern technology, including wireless broadband, VoIP telephone systems that can be operated from a laptop anywhere in the world, teleconferencing, web cams and the like, it is possible for office workers to operate from anywhere.
“There is always a ‘but’, however. For engineers, the collaboration with colleagues is an essential ingredient in their work – particularly for those involved in design. Somehow, even with all the technology available, nothing compares with face-to-face communication. It’s hard to read in an e-mail a slight raising of an eyebrow or a faintly creeping smile that can say ‘you must be mad’ or ‘I agree’.
“With the balance of practical work in groups with cerebral tasks in home isolation, the very best of worlds can be achieved.”