Engineering professions 1 Fair access


Some aspiring engineers who are women say they have found the engineering sector ‘hard to break into’


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But, adds Dwyer, the task facing the industry is ‘vast’.


He calls for ‘concerted efforts’ through a combined initiative orchestrated and funded by the government’s business and education departments. Such an initiative should be delivered through a collection of interested parties, led by an organisation such as the Royal Academy of Engineering. Dwyer believes that reducing the engineering skills


shortage is fundamental to long-term recovery and ‘requires a focused effort to develop understanding and fairly funded opportunities that may take a separate


Comparison of the family-income background of typical professionals


% difference between the average family’s income and that of the family that the typical professional grew up with


1958 birth cohort 1970 birth cohort


70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0


Professions with a falling proportion of members who grew up in families with above-average incomes


Professions with a rising proportion of members who grew up in families with above-average incomes


route from the other professions’. Catherine Simpson is one of only nine female CIBSE Fellows, and is director of Building Simulation Ltd, working with consulting engineers and contractors. She believes that apprenticeships will only benefit those that ‘believe in themselves and have a genuine interest in what they are doing – you can teach skills, enthusiasm has to come from within’. The sector must also make itself more appealing, says


Rebecca Warren, who works for consulting engineering firm Sinclair Knight Merz in Manchester. She calls for better promotion of engineering as a profession in general ‘and a greater willingness by companies to provide work experience to young people’. Warren also supports the need for outreach work in


schools: ‘For a very small outlay of time whole groups of children can be shown how exciting and varied and important engineering is – but companies see no immediate benefit to themselves so it’s not encouraged generally.’ But for others the problem is that employers want


several years’ proven track record and chartered status, which rules out not just minorities, but also anyone under 30 who isn’t already in the field. ‘This is coming back to trouble us,’ says one engineer who did not wish to be named. ‘We are not prepared as an industry to invest time in developing engineers.’


Across the professions as a whole, the typical professional grew up in a family with an income well above the average family’s: today’s younger professionals (born in 1970) typically grew up in a family with an income 27% above that of the average family, compared with 17% for today’s older professionals (born in 1958)


Source: Social Mobility and the Professions, 2009, Centre for Market and Public Organisation, as reported in Unleashing Aspiration: the Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, Crown copyright


30 CIBSE Journal November 2010


Attacking barriers CIBSE, which has two representatives on groups set up to implement the Unleashing Aspiration report’s recommendations, says that many are already being carried out. These include creating career mentors, work experience tasters and school alumni networks where experts act as mentors and go back into their former schools. The nature of the building services profession


means it already scores well in terms of a mix of social class. Research suggests it is characterised by


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Artists, musicians and writers


Lecturers and professors Teachers


Nurses Stockbrokers and traders


Scientists and other medical professions Engineers


Bankers Accountants


Journalists and broadcasters


Doctors Lawyers


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