Once upon a time the United Kingdom was a world leader in engineering and technology. For generations there was a built in desire and drive for clever people to explore, investigate, invent and break seemingly impossible barriers in all aspects of engineering. Then came the most recent modern revolution and the cost of labour saw much of our manufacturing industries vanish offshore and the slow eroding of our technical expertise as the governments of the up and coming countries embraced new technologies, nurturing and investing in their people to take on the new skills required. In the UK our government chose to embrace the service and financial industries instead.
I’ve often wondered how a country can really prosper if it continually buys more in from others and sits by and watches its skills eroded by others. With the most recent recession we’ve been forced to take a hard look at what this country actually does and how it earns its money. One of the aspects about this I’m pretty passionate about is not surprisingly engineering, and particularly electronic engineering. It’s becoming increasingly important that we try to grab hold of the vanishing skills base we have in engineering and take the necessary steps to encourage the next generation to consider engineering for their career. In the past decade the brightest kids have been dazzled by the ridiculous earnings of the financial sector, and actively sought by it as they leave school and enter higher education. Whilst the lessons of the current recession will of course slowly be forgotten and the financial sector will no doubt blossom again, hopefully the next set of bright sparks growing up now will have been shocked by it and won’t automatically see their future as another banker in the city. There is now a massive opportunity to encourage the next generation to become engaged and fascinated by the technology industries.
The reality is that right now the state of the UK engineering profession is pitifully low compared with that of our European counterparts. One of the causes of this I think is that the image of engineering is also pitifully low in this country. The person who comes round to install our sky box, plumb in our washing machine or fix our phone line is referred to as an engineer. Why? Why do we lump the engineers who innovate, design, invent new technologies and push engineering boundaries into the same category as those employed to provide the most basic and technically un-challenging jobs? When I’m asked what I do I tend to try and dress it up a bit by calling myself a design engineer, as if to say I’m not someone who’s had a couple of day’s training and can now run a bit of cable through your house, but I actually design things! I’m not sure it really makes very much difference though – the word engineer tends to make most people switch off pretty quickly.
The stupid thing is that there are loads of engineering careers out there, appealing to all sorts of people, and they are amongst the most rewarding careers you can have. Jobs where there’s continual room to grow and move up and where there’s a world of knowledge to learn, master and maybe even become at the forefront of if you’re willing.
Right now we have amazing opportunities in this country. As we leave the recession and a new period of growth starts the world faces incredible engineering challenges. Whatever the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and other head in sand types might say, we have to make massive changes to our use of technology and its energy. The green revolution is going to affect every aspect of our lives over the next 10 – 20 years and with it will keep coming the incredible technological advances that improve our lives.
The recent publication of an important National Grid research report – Engineering Our Future – which looks at attitudes to engineering among young people, their parents and teachers, makes for interesting reading. Researchers talked to more than 1500 people and found that engineering is now perceived as an ‘invisible industry’. Amongst the findings we’re that six out of ten young people we’re unable to name a recent engineering achievement. It seems there is very poor understanding about what engineers do and this no doubt leads to stereotypes about the work being menial, dirty or boring. This in turn creates a low appreciation of the contribution that engineers make to society.
Steve Holliday, chief executive of National Grid, added his voice to the debate last month, describing the long range forecast for a shortage of engineering and science skills as one of the most serious issues he faced as the chief executive of a FTSE top 20 company. “Engineers are at the heart of our business,” he said, “and we need a new generation who will drive forward the changes to bring about a low carbon economy”. “Hearing that young people and their parents have such a negative image concerns me because our workforce planning points to the need for 1000 new engineering roles in the run up to 2020 at a time when we are doing our part to achieve the UK government’s green agenda. Over the same period nearly one third of our workforce could retire. It’s clear that our policy of ‘growing our own’ through graduate and apprentice schemes just won’t fill the gap. We are going to need a bigger pool of talented engineers for the future – not a shrinking one.”
So how do we change these negative perceptions and inspire young people to see engineering as an important and rewarding career that is vital to the future of the country? The Americans do it – who wouldn’t want to go and work in Silicon Valley and help create the future if you have the talent? Take a look at this great spoof tv ad, part of a set produced by Intel, comparing one of the inventors of USB to a rock star:
It’s not just the States though, many other European countries are way ahead of us in promoting engineering throughout society. Why do we have a government that is seemingly incapable of taking the reins and providing the nurture and promotion of engineering that we desperately need. Tony Blair got ridiculed for making a YouTube video not so long ago, yet Obama is universally praised for his use of technology to help win his election campaign. Our open but always attacking press of course play a large part in this.
Mr Holliday of National Grid summed it up pretty well, “Engineers and scientists will be the people who solve the big challenges facing us all like energy sustainability and climate change. It’s up to us now to inspire the next generation to take up these crucial challenges.”
