SKILLS SHORTAGE IN ENGINEERING? 15

[chris9]

A leading UK politician recently stated in a national newspaper that industry and academia needed to encourage more women into the engineering profession to address the skills shortage.

If indeed there were a skills shortage for engineering posts in the UK then encouraging women into the profession would address the issue. However, about 15 years ago stood many impressive buildings around the UK teaming with engineers. Now they have been demolished and replaced with retail outlets. The ones that are still standing are selling off land and down sizing.

The engineering industry in the UK is shrinking, engineering companies that have been trading for over a hundred years are closing down. British engineering companies are being sold to large multinational companies who often only wish to get their hands on the brand name before discarding the manufacturing base.

Markets are driven by supply and demand. Demand for engineers is so low that pay is very poor in comparison to most other professions.

Just where do politicians get the idea from that there is a shortage of engineers?

 

[davefitz]

My guess is that the politicians get this idea from the "think tanks" that are struggling to justify the need to allow more immigration, although the root cause for encouraging immigration is really based on other needs.

These think tanks are often funded or associated with "interest groups" or industries that recognize that their long term economic growth is inextricably associated with growth in the population, low labor costs, an age distribution balanced at 30 years of age, and consumers taht are in the max consumption category( ie young families buying entry level houses with 2.2 children). Since the trend in western countries , without immigration, is toward an aging population with fewer children, that trend is targeted to be broken by intense lobbying efforts to either allow mor immigration or to turn a blind eye on all laws that were passed to limit same.

 

[PSE]

If you cant bump into an engineer just by turning around there must be a shortage right? It makes for good press but they likely should be talking about the displacement of engineers rather than a shortage. Funny how that happens when as you point out, the design and manufacturing infrastructure gets dismantled.

Regards,

 

[ScottyUK]

Possibly by the same reasoning that they think they are worth £45k + £100k in 'expenses' and 'benefits'.

The concept that there aren't enough engineers has nothing to do with reality, nor has it any relevance to what might be for the benefit of the coutry as a whole, and has everything to do with their own political agenda.

These are the same politicians who allowed our manufacturing industry to die and did nothing to save it. Don't expect any help from the self-serving bastards.




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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[Comcokid]

The emphisis that there is a shortage of engineers or other technical people comes from the technical schools, Colleges, and Universities. These organizations have invested in educating technical people.This education process keeps not only the academic programs going, but keeps the professors employed, and indirectly supports the many research programs. Needless to say, if they didn't have students, the rest would disappear as well.

And where will all these engineering graduates go? Well, at least if you have a degree, you can get a better job doing something. The Fine Arts programs at colleges have been graduating students for years that will be employed at many different jobs - except Fine Arts.

 

[DrillerNic]

Last I noticed there was a shortage of skilled technicians- plumbers, electricians, welders that sort of thing, (and I think these are the type of people that may be arriving in the UK from eastern Europe) but I'm not so sure about a shortage of engineers....

That said, I visited a Robert Gordon's university recently and on a MSc Engineering course aimed at the oil & gas industry, over half the students were from abroard- either they're finding the UK students, or no graduate wants to work in the Oil industry any more (dirty, human rights abusers who kill dolphins.....)

 

[makeup]

It is accepted even at the political level that the national engineering requirement in the UK will shrink. Some areas, electronics, chemistry may show slight growth but metal bashing is in steady decline. What has to be maintained is the supply of labour to this declining market, it cant just stop. Hence skills shortage, replacing those that retire and new skills as labour intensive techniques are replaced by machines. The challenge, to find enough fools prepared to do something for nothing and encouraging them to get involved in a career that is in general going nowhere. The paradox is that engieering today needs a higher quality of person to move forward. These tend to be relatively well educated people who have done there career planning homework, seen that the market in general is in decline and found alternatives that pay much,much more or have better long term opportunities.

 

[GregLocock]

I agree with Comcokid. The engineering institutions in the UK are hopelessly compromised by being overloaded with academics and industry (ie employers) representatives, both of whom have an interest in making sure that there are an ever expanding number of engineering graduates.

If the institutions were doing the job we pay them to do they would be restricting access to the engineering professions, and enforcing standards. Instead they schmooze with politicians and industry leaders, and have a very nice lifestyle in London. How many working engineers are there in London? So why do we need our technical library there? I am so close to resigning from the IMechE at times it is not funny.







Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[ScottyUK]

One of the greatest crimes against our profession is that the leaders of industry and our politicians are, collectively, allowing the years of knowledge and experience held by the engineers now contemplating retirement to be lost forever.

Many of these mature engineers are working as self-employed consultants, after learning and mastering their profession in the great engineering institutions of yesteryear. These skills are not being passed down. Those who lead our profession have yet to see the obvious outcome: that when all the consultants have retired, there are no replacements of equivalent expertise to fill the void.


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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[HgTX]

Scotty, what's the solution to that? How does one arrange for the skills to be passed down?

Hg

 

[DrillerNic]

Greg- I thought the engineering institutes were restricting entry to the profession of engineering, by making the requirements for CEng a 4 year Engineering degree rather than a 3 year degree?

As for engineers becoming self employed consultants, that's partly due to poor careers planning in many employers- one you've got to a certain level in engineering, (say lead engineer) in my experince the only way to continue up the ladder (and keep getting more money) is to move into managment- either project management or line management. This doesn't appeal to a lot of people, so they move onto agency work to get the fat paypackets and remain doing technical work...my company has recently recognised this and is developing a specialist engineer career path where you can eventually become the global guru on a particular aspect of petroleum engineering, if you want to keep getting promotions and still remain in a technical field. Clearly part of the guru job description is running advanced training courses, writing manuals etc to pass on knowledge.

Also, in my field, the work pattern is moving away from large integrated oil companies to smaller oil companies, who will buy in their expertise from specialised engineering consultancies, and it is in the interest of these consultancies to make sure that the expertise of their senior staff is passed on the their junior staff, so that they can survive.

 

[epoisses]

"Industry and academia need to encourage more women into the engineering profession to address the skills shortage"... err... did anyone consider the possibility that skills shortage was meant in qualitative sense, not quantitative...???

 

[chris9]

‘did anyone consider the possibility that skills shortage was meant in qualitative sense, not quantitative...???’

I think the mean pay of Chartered Engineers indicates that there is over supply rather than a shortage. If one were to categorise different jobs based on salary only then Chartered Engineers would not be regarded as being in a professional occupation. If the Government wants to raise the quality of engineers in the UK it needs to introduce legislation to differentiate Chartered Engineers from jobs such as washing machine service engineers. Encouraging more people into the shrinking engineering industries will only drive down salaries and discourage the talented.

 

[corus]

I dont think that low salaries indicates an over supply of CEngs, more that engineers are not thought of highly enough by employers. There is a problem here in that it is employers are the ones that complain of a lack of skilled people, and yet are not prepared to pay sufficiently for them. The consequence of this is a gradual downward spiral of the numbers entering engineering, and a gradual increase in employers looking to other countries for those skills, as is already happening in the UK.
It would be impossible for a government to legislate in favour of CEngs, rather it should be that employers make that differentiation (with the appropriate rewards) together with the Instituitions making the CEng something more meaningful and worthy, in a par with a doctorate perhaps, rather than given out for in recognition of low academic achievement with a certain number of years in work, as is often the case.

corus

 

[chris9]

‘It would be impossible for a government to legislate in favour of CEngs.’

I disagree that this would be impossible. Right now anyone with or without qualifications or experience can call themselves an engineer. For the general public and I think many politicians there is no obvious difference between a welder and a CEng. If the government wants the UK to be world class in engineering then it needs to raise the profile of the profession. One way of doing this would be to introduce legislation in favour of CEngs so that to improve the quality of output, tax incentives could be offered. There would then be a financial incentive for companies who are committed to employing CEng’s in order to produce world-class products for export. At the moment most large companies are at the mercy of shareholders who probably don’t know the difference between a welder and a CEng. Encouraging more people into engineering in the current state of the economy will only lower pay, discourage talented people from entering engineering and reduce quality/productivity.

 

[ScottyUK]

Hg,

In answer to you earlier question about how skills should be passed down, the way it used to be done was by employing a staff large enough to be able to carry the experienced guys nearing the end of their career and younger engineers who were experienced enough to learn without needing to be led step by step who could learn from their elders.

Today's employers largely aren't interested in the long-term future of the industry, only in saving costs today. This is acheieved by reducing staff to the bare minimum, or by farming out the work to contractors. The policy saves costs in the short term, but creates a long term skills gap that will be very hard to fill. The problem is compounded by the number of non-engineers who are being placed into positions of influence, but who are ignorant of the problems that their policy is creating.



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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[DrillerNic]

Certainly legislation along the lines of only CEng can sign off work or something would improve the status of Chartered Engineers (at the moment, you simply have to be a competent person; now clearly a CEng is competent, but there are other ways to proove competency). I finally filled in the forms for Chartered Petroleum Engineer so that I could sign off reserves estimates as a Competent person.

As for engineers pay; I think that depends upon the branch or engineering you work in. I'm a Petroleum Engineer in the Upstream Oil & Gas industry. I'm staff on about £80,000 plus performance bonuses and rig bonuses and country allowances if I'm sent to a toilet of a country. So on my pay, I'm clearly as professional as a consultant surgeon or accountant!

 

[davefitz]

As an example of a percieved skill shortage in US engineering, there are now seminars being held to aquaint oil companies and their recently retired petroleum engineers to the expected need to rehire back these retirees as consultants. Apparently the oil industry had downsized too much over the last 10-15 yrs and now finds itself short of experienced engineers.

 

[epoisses]

That's because anybody from outside the organisation looks 10x more intelligent than an insider. Don't know if it's because he wears a tie or whether it is collective cognitive dissonance in the heads of management because the outside guy is paid much higher..?

 

[chris9]

DrillerNic,

In the automotive industry you can also earn that kind of salary if you are on the board of Directors or you are a self- employed consultant. I’ve never heard of an engineer on staff earn nearly as much as that. I think I’m in the wrong industry!