www.ireng.org bunch of people to work with during his presidency.


I’d also like to thank all those behind the scenes and supporters of the Institute especially past President Mr. Trevor Staton and his teams at Sheffield Refractories and Intermet Refractory Products for their support which has been absolutely invaluable to myself and the Institute.


The last couple of years have been challenging for the Institute and the whole team has done a great job dealing with the various issues we have been beset with, particularly during the last 12 months. As with all challenges, hard work and a willingness to adapt have seen us come out very much stronger, leaner and more efficient. The restructure of the council & exec meetings enabled consensus/action to be reached more swiftly. The reorganisation of the Journal management team following the collapse of our publisher was a blessing in disguise leading to a more efficient and transparent organisation. The re-invigoration of efforts and belief in our conference have all yielded significant success, for sure a big highlight.


The massive success of last year’s conference has to be the biggest highlight for me where we not only had a very strong selection of presenters, including end users for the first time in many many years, but also boasted a very good attendance of delegates. The feedback was phenomenal, it shows we are taking things in a very positive direction and shows a real interest and demand for an Institute conference.


This year’s conference promises to be just as strong with presenters again, including from the steel industry and across the length and breadth of the supply chain. We have planned a slightly longer conference this year with additional speakers and a panel discussion which promises to provide an interesting end to the day.


Ok, so I think that’s enough retrospective stuff, onto the current and future!


As regular readers will know, I sometimes drift into a semi- utopian, almost romantic vision (if there can be such a thing) of refractories, the impact and uses of refractories in our everyday lives and children. I also bounce along the kerb of how difficult it is to bring new talent into the industry and the retention of existing talent.


So, I guess it should not have been a surprise to receive a very positive letter about this kind of topic and what to do about it following my last column.


In this letter it was stated that “All members of this Institute must be extremely proud that they have the expertise and


November 2017 Issue


President’s Column


knowledge on which virtually the whole of the activities of our world depends and yet most of the public do not even know of the existence of refractory materials and what they do”.


Absolutely! Indeed the last question of my first interview was “what do you know about refractories”. Of course, the answer at 16 years old was always going to be “Nothing” and with that I got the job on the basis of being honest.


Back to the letter which went on to summarise that we are still a most little known industry and section of materials sciences. It also posed the question that “Does this mean that the industry is missing out on recruiting young talented people because they know nothing about it? Should we be doing something to make the general public aware of our existence and what an interesting and challenging job it can be”?


I thought this to be a very good and very valid question. For sure, we all tend to fall into the trap of becoming insular within our industry, looking for existing talent whilst bemoaning the lack of new talent. Why should we not do something about it? Why does new talent so often overlook our industry and why are retention levels of new talent so poor?


A few years ago past President Keith Andrews asked these exact questions and engaged a graduate consultant to consider those questions. The response was startling at first but then confirmed what we probably already knew. “Refractories just don’t have a sexy image and there are many more roles which utilise


transferable skills with


more social hours, cleaner environments and often better packages” said the consultant.


Now, this might sound odd but I believe that is irrelevant. Nobody I know has ever grew up thinking “I want to be a refractories engineer”. But if you don’t cast the net and if you don’t show people the opportunities then you can only expect to get a poor response when recruiting.


So I totally agree with the writer of the letter that we should put our industry out into the public domain more than we currently do and we should publicise the fact that there are good opportunities within our industry. The more the message gets out the more interest there will be. Surely?


So how can we do this? Well, I don’t think anyone has spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how to do it but I guess the first thing to do would be to work more closely with colleges and universities. I will certainly be raising this issue with the Institute as there must be a way we can take some


ENGINEER THE REFRACTORIES 5


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