ENGINEERING IN FOCUS
Josh from the ‘This is Engineering’ campaign – a disaster relief engineer who looks at how to make structures safe when trying to rescue people in collapsed buildings following earthquakes.
be to a 14-year-old girl considering an engineering career. She replied: “The first thing I’d do is send her a link to ‘This is Engineering’. I’d explain that engineering offers tremendous, and extremely varied, opportunities, and that we have great evidence that female engineers have a high degree of passion for their job. A survey (the Academy’s ‘Inclusive Culture’ survey) we undertook of both male and female UK engineers, which questioned 7,000 professionals, identified very high job satisfaction. I was especially heartened, though, that 87 per cent of female respondents said they would recommend engineering as a ‘great career’ to friends and family. Interestingly, though, how inclusive people felt the profession was much depended on which ‘group’ they were in. Those from underrepresented groups – such as women and some ethnic groups, unsurprisingly perceived it as less inclusive. I think it was a useful reminder that the world looks very different from different perspectives. For an engineering employer or institute, just understanding this is important to identifying how you can create a more inclusive culture.”
Apprenticeships
I asked Dr Sillem whether she considered there was much further scope to expand and enhance engineering apprenticeships. She said: “Apprenticeships have always been a key route into engineering, although I still feel I there is a bit of an unfounded perception that a vocational route in is somehow inferior. Indeed many engineering leaders have come up via the apprenticeship route, and the Academy has several very eminent Fellows, including our Past-President, Sir John Parker, who came up this way. That’s not widely enough known, and perhaps we haven’t done enough to celebrate the
40 Health Estate Journal January 2019
Sonya, another ‘protagonist’ in the ‘This is Engineering’ initiative, works on special effects for Hollywood ‘blockbusters’.
achievements of those who have entered the profession through a vocational path. Fortunately, the introduction of degree apprenticeships is seeing more young people making a proactive choice to follow this route because they see it as a more rewarding and a ‘smarter’ path in – they can learn while they earn, get a great degree, and start their ascent of the career ladder.”
Brexit’s potential impact
Given the current focus on the UK leaving the EU, I felt it would have been remiss not to ask Hayaatun Sillem about her perceptions of the likely impact of Brexit on the UK engineering workforce. She said: “The Academy co-ordinated a collaborative piece of work with the other 37 organisations that represent professional engineering in the UK – including IHEEM, that was published in October 2016, shortly after the Referendum vote. The resulting report, Engineering – a future outside the UK, was produced after extensive consultation with engineering stakeholders, including employers. The exercise’s aim was to take a balanced look, and to explore both the risks and opportunities post-Brexit. The overwhelming concern to emerge was around ‘skills shortages’, because engineering is already – in relative terms – more dependent on international talent flows than many other professions. Take UK university staff, and there is a higher proportion of international teaching staff than from many other disciplines, while many companies rely on international recruitment. There is an expectation – although we don’t yet know the detail – that migration will become more tightly controlled post-Brexit, but already over half the occupations on the Home Office Shortage Occupation list are either in engineering or linked to it. There are thus
reasonable grounds for saying that continued access to skills is a concern.”
An unexpected ‘upside’ There had, however, Hayaatun Sillem feels, been ‘an upside’ from the political decision to leave the EU; it had focused more attention on our domestic skills in engineering, which she said ‘had been an issue for decades’, but had previously attracted very little attention politically. She added: “I think the expectation that we were going to move into a more tightly controlled migration environment saw the Government take more interest in what we could do to tackle our domestic skills shortfall. That is important, because irrespective of international talent flows, we should be making sure that we have a well-equipped future workforce to maintain our competitiveness. Clearly the concern around Brexit has already had business impacts. Our focus at the Academy has been on trying to ensure that we respond to whatever form of Brexit materialises. We are going to have to think about how we create wealth in a very different context, and engineering will be a big part of that.”
I finished by asking Dr Sillem what she most enjoyed about her current role. She said: “I feel hugely privileged to do a job where I am deeply passionate about what I am doing. We all work here with a focus on improving engineering excellence for society’s benefit. That’s why the Academy exists. What a great mission to get you out of bed in the morning. Actually, it’s also an incredibly important time for engineering and its role within the UK, and a period when there is a new appetite for positive change. It’s also a privilege to work with so many talented people – both on the Academy’s staff and the Fellowship, and in our numerous partner organisations.”
hej
The Royal Academy of Engineering
The Royal Academy of Engineering
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