Spotlight On
before getting the opportunity to work in the research and development (R&D) department, which is situated in the brand new facility that has been built at Harwin’s Portsmouth site.
What are the skills you need to succeed as an engineer, and how has Harwin’s apprentice programme helped with your career development?
You have to have interest in the subject. If you aren’t really interested, you can’t get passionate about what you do. You also need to be ready to listen and adapt. Harwin has offered me lots of opportunities to do courses and extra learning. When I left school, I never expected to be doing an HND, which is what I’m doing now, in General Engineering. I’ve done a level 3 BTEC in Mechanical Engineering and a level 3 NVQ in Tool Making. I’ve also got an HNC in Mechanical Engineering and they’ve put me through an Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) course. I’m the first apprentice to do that. I’ve done an Abrasive Wheels training course too. My CV’s just filling up here, and I’m learning academic skills as well as engineering ones. Harwin is prepared to invest in you and give you time out for training and all apprentices have full training in health and safety from the beginning. The skills I’ve learnt here I’ve already been able to use elsewhere. The Jeep for instance, needs constant maintenance, which means that I am always finding ways to apply the knowledge I’ve picked up.
(Question to Ben Green): There’s a well-publicised lack of entrants into STEM careers, which the UK government is trying to address. What is Harwin doing and what else can companies do to attract more young people into engineering?
Dave Parsons demonstrates apprentice projects to HRH Prince Michael of Kent at Harwin's factory opening in 2016
Companies need to be more proactive in their outreach. As well as our apprenticeships, at Harwin we run an outreach programme for 14 year olds. Five or six youngsters are brought in for this each year and over the course of a week they do half a day in a series of different departments.
With Harwin, the opportunities are there for development. For instance, one of our employees came here at 16. He is now 27 and is the product strategy manager for our high reliability connectors which is a key element of our business. We are continuing to learn from the
apprentice programme that we run – it has
changed and grown even since Dave started his apprenticeship. As well as offering work experience to youngsters from school, we also welcome interns from all over the world. Our stamping presses are made by the Swiss company, Bruderer and our moulding machines come from the German manufacturer, Arburg. We’ve run apprentice exchange programmes with each of those companies. We’ve also had 15-20 interns in the last four years. Many of our interns come from countries such as Italy, Spain and Poland.
In addition, we also work with various universities, either supporting them financially or by supplying products and tools. We sponsor a multi-disciplinary satellite engineering programme for fourth year MEng students at Warwick University who are designing a satellite due to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) and then deployed into low earth orbit (at around 400km) to detect and locate signals from smart tags attached to wildlife back on earth. We also continue to sponsor teams in the Formula Student series, in which students design, build and race cars, both electric and conventional. That’s a great way to reach out to young people and we’ve kept in touch with and tracked their careers. Those are just a couple of examples of
Harwin’s involvement with students. It is important to get into schools and give them a flavour of what there is on offer from engineering companies, but it’s also important to support students who are further on in their development in ways that help to develop their problem-solving and teamwork capabilities, as well as extending their design skills and expertise. After all, they represent the future of engineering.
EMC shielding manufactured by Harwin
www.cieonline.co.uk Components in Electronics
www.harwin.com December 2017/January 2018 35
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