Actions, not words

The engineering industry is at crisis point because of an extreme skills shortage and it is time to stop waiting for someone else to sort out the problem.

I am the managing director of a Liverpool-based M&E engineering consultant and there are not enough home-grown apprentices coming through for smaller firms to compete for major contracts. For example, smaller engineering firms have struggled to win large chunks of work as part of the £920m Grosvenor Paradise Street project in Liverpool because the skills are not in place for a project of this scale.

I have decided to tackle the problem head on by joining the committee of CIBSE for Merseyside and North Wales to raise the educational opportunities and standards locally. I joined the local CIBSE chapter 18 months ago to get the message across that somebody else won’t deal with the skills problem and we have to do something about it. I have made a start by joining forces with Liverpool Community College in a bid to boost student intake for M&E engineering courses.

There is currently an HNC course in building services engineering and an HND course filled entirely by trainees with building services company Haden Young, available at Liverpool Community College. My intention is to set up another HND course by encouraging local firms to send people to the college. We would need about 20 pupils a year to sustain the course. I will be sending out a questionnaire to engineers and contractors in the region asking them to support the initiative and how many trainees they would be willing to send.

The industry will only survive if it recruits and trains. It is time for everyone to come together and invest in training so we can keep this highly skilled industry, and our businesses, alive.