Quinn, who was one of the contributors to the recruitment firm's latest building services salary survey, describes the market, quite simply, as "wild".
Such sentiments are evident in some of the key findings from the report, especially for electrical engineers. The average salary of a senior electrical contracts manager (age 40, HNC qualified) has crept above £29 000, a whopping 16% up on the survey for 2000. For mechanical engineers the increase is much more modest at 3·9%.
Perhaps even more tellingly, a junior electrical contracts engineer (age 24, ONC qualified) can expect over £18 000 per annum (in London, £21 000). Indeed, junior estimators, junior m&e quantity surveyors and junior mechanical contracts engineers can all expect salaries above £19 000.
"Graduate engineers might have been looking at £13 000 as a starting salary four years ago," says Quinn, "now they are commanding more like £20 000. But then, why shouldn't they? If you came out of university with an economics degree you would expect to get that sort of pay."
The shortfall in potential applicants has been caused by a number of factors. First, and most obviously, the building industry has been going through a long period of sustained growth, mopping up the available staff and placing a premium on keeping good workers happy. At the same time, education and training has become a problem on all fronts. Many m&e firms cut back on or cut out apprenticeships during the coldest days of the early 1990s, and the industry is simply not producing the same levels of high calibre youngsters that it did previously.
The Government has successfully encouraged science and maths-literate pupils to stay on at school and college, and many of those discover little if anything about building services by the time that they go out to the workplace.
The problem has been a long time coming but, reckons Quinn, has now hit its peak: "We're finding that the companies doing best at encouraging people are those that market themselves a bit, get out to the colleges and universities."
In Quinn's experience it is not just the young who are gaining from the situation. Many m&e firms have begun actively recruiting older staff: the average age of an appointee is now 48 across the building services sector according to Hays. Quinn herself was recently involved in placing a 64 year old in a maintenance job. "With a lack of suitably qualified youngsters, many firms are looking again at older staff who have the skills that they need," she reflects. "The idea of the job market being for under-40s is definitely over."
There is also an influx of workers from overseas, especially from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Middle East. "There has been a tendency for companies to worry about work visas and that kind of thing," says Quinn, "but many of these people have ancestral visas and come very well qualified because in their own countries they are trained across disciplines, so they get very wide-ranging experience. It's been a bit of a divide to bridge, but those companies where we have placed overseas workers have become really sold on what they have to offer."
The one area where the industry is still failing to attract recruits is from the pool of available women workers. Quinn can only recall placing a couple of women in building services jobs and says that normally they are interested in the industry because of a personal association. "Architecture is much better," she says, "and we are seeing one or two women who are qualified as CAD technicians, but have retrained because they realise they could significantly improve their salary prospects."
Though there are the inevitable geographical variations, Quinn believes that the same pattern is emerging right across the country. The office that she manages operations for, Norwich, is seeing the greatest pressure on job vacancies. "This area is really booming," she says. "We have a lot of new commercial building work, PFI work, lots of private houses being built, and large MoD and US Armed Services contracts. The MoD alone soaks up a lot of the well qualified engineers."
The current situation has, she reckons, been building for the past two years. At present there are no signs of the imbalance worsening, but neither are there indications of it improving. "As a business you really have to sell yourself now," she says. "Some firms are simply not addressing what they need to do to bring in or keep staff. They haven't accepted how salaries have risen and are not budging on the money. We've got some firms offering starter salaries of £10 000 and the kids are going 'we could work at Burger King for more than that'."
The figures for the salary survey have been compiled by rercruitment consultant Hays Montrose from its 48 regional offices.
Source
Electrical and Mechanical Contractor
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