Editorial

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Editorial

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Editorial advisory panel

Laurence Aston, Director of Mechanical Engineering, Morgan Professional Services

David Clark, Partner, Max Fordham Consulting Engineers

Patrick Conaghan, Partner, Hoare Lea Consulting Engineers

David Hughes, Building Services Consultant, MTT Consulting Philip King, Director, Hilson Moran

Chani Leahong, Senior Associate, Fulcrum Consulting

Stephen Lisk, President, The Society of Light and Lighting

Professor John Swaffield, CIBSE Past

President

Ged Tyrrell, Managing Director, Tyrrell Systems Ant Wilson, Director, AECOM Morwenna Wilson, Graduate Engineer, Arup Terry Wyatt, Consultant to Hoare Lea

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Don’t neglect those green shoots

I

t comes as little surprise that the recession has led to a wave of redundancies, with younger engineers being among those feeling the brunt of job cutbacks. As our interviews with young professionals underline (page 43), if they are victims of cutbacks they then face the prospect of trying to get back into employment but being turned down due to lack of experience. The wider concern, though, is that the building services engineering (BSE) sector could become the victim of a self-inflicted double- whammy. Amid the downturn, companies are losing young blood whose talents are needed to take them and the profession as a whole forward with fresh ideas and ambition. When the sector then needs to start recruiting again, it may find that many of those who were ‘let go’ have gone elsewhere. Moreover, youngsters

who are unsure which engineering undergraduate studies to pursue will be even more reluctant to go for the BSE sector than they already are. And those BSE courses, already few in number, will feel the knock-on effects. As our annual jobs survey shows (page

By failing to nuture new talent,

senior engineers could find themselves accused of letting down the whole

profession

just job insecurity but also depressed wages that could be driving BSE professionals away. Again, it’s no surprise to learn that salaries in the sector have been largely static in the past year. This is an inevitable outcome in a recession, when firms’ fees and margins are squeezed ever harder. But it could also turn out to be very short-sighted for firms that depend on new entrants to feed through to higher-level roles when the baby- boomers are retiring in their droves. In her opinion column, young engineer Morwenna Wilson makes a powerful case for encouraging the present generation of young BSE professionals to take the green-buildings agenda forward (page 26). This generation has an opportunity to succeed where previous ones have not – in pushing for integrated project teams and collaboration across the supply chain to try to ensure that buildings deliver on their design intentions. This is not to say that seasoned professionals

46, and Letters, page 24), BSE professionals are increasingly eyeing other related sectors, such as energy and power – in effect, they are looking at jumping the energy-demand ship to join the energy-supply supertanker. It is not only the utilities that are attracting our young professionals – the realm of energy efficiency assessments also offers new job opportunities. The jobs survey, conducted by recruitment consultancy Hays, also suggests that it is not

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from an earlier generation aren’t vigorously pursuing the same agenda. Of course they are – as our interview with the incoming CIBSE president Rob Manning testifies (page 34). But it is the BSE directors of the future who will be charged with delivering on the green agenda – and, in failing to keep and nuture this enthusiastic young talent, the present generation of senior engineers could one day find themselves accused of letting down the whole profession.

Bob Cervi, Editor

bcervi@cibsejournal.com

May 2010 CIBSE Journal

5

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