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The search and rescue helicopter banks steeply over Dorset’s Jurassic shoreline, its downward-facing radar able to find a single person who is likely to be misplaced, floating within the English Channel.
For this demonstration flight, the climate is ideal, however as Mark Burnand, chief take a look at pilot at Leonardo Helicopters explains, the AW101 is equally succesful in zero visibility, monitoring casualties in heavy seas lengthy after the human eye has misplaced them.
The AW101, or Merlin, is “a severe piece of equipment”, mentioned Burnand, and one that’s completely designed, constructed and authorized in Leonardo’s manufacturing facility in Yeovil, Somerset.
However again on the bottom, Leonardo’s managing director Adam Clarke admits that as aerospace evolves into a brand new world of composite supplies and pilotless passenger craft, the massive problem shall be to maintain it that approach.
“We are able to’t get sufficient individuals,” he mentioned, regardless of having over 130 apprentices. “We’re recruiting individuals however they’re retiring on the identical price. So we have to change how we do the recruiting.”
Leonardo, which sits within the west of England’s aerospace cluster that instantly employs some 37,000 individuals and generates an estimated £7bn a 12 months for the economic system, is much from alone.
An Establishment of Engineering and Know-how survey printed final 12 months, discovered round half of engineering firms mentioned they’d skilled difficulties with a scarcity of abilities, each inside their present workforce and within the wider labour market.
In 2019, even earlier than the ‘nice retirement’ triggered by Covid-19 noticed a file variety of technically expert over-50s leaving the office, the commerce physique EngineeringUK forecast an annual shortfall of between 37,000 and 59,000 engineers graduating.
To assist slender that hole the federal government has ordered faculties to bear in mind the findings of its local skills improvement plans, drawn up by regional commerce teams, in order that programs higher match the wants of native trade.
It is a welcome transfer in accordance with Matt Tudge, who as head of abilities planning at Enterprise West, which published its LSIP last month, discovered that whereas bigger firms had been in a position to spend money on abilities, cash-strapped small and medium-sized companies had been discovering it more durable.
With lower than 10 per cent of UK graduates being engineers, in comparison with almost 25 per cent in Germany, in accordance with the OECD, British firms are combating over a smaller expertise pool.
If the UK is to deal with its dearth of engineering abilities, Tudge added, it might want to shift cultural attitudes in direction of technical abilities, that are extra revered in European international locations like Germany and the Netherlands.
“Folks nonetheless consider engineering as filth, spanners and grazing your knuckles beneath a automotive, however that’s simply not the case. Now we have to alter perceptions,” added Tudge.
A latest survey by EngineeringUK discovered there may be loads of work nonetheless to be accomplished, with lower than 1 / 4 of 11-19 year-olds saying they’d heard about engineering careers from a careers adviser.
“Loads of younger individuals aren’t being given the publicity to these alternatives in science and expertise — they discover out when it’s virtually too late, once they’re at college,” mentioned Nicholas Davis, abilities supervisor on the Royal Aeronautical Society. “That’s the place the issue begins and the place it may very well be solved.”
Making engineering extra engaging to younger ladies — little over 12 per cent of engineering staff are ladies, in accordance with EngineeringUK — can even be a part of the answer.
Throughout the city at Yeovil Faculty the place Leonardo trains a lot of its trainees, 18-year-old Cerys Flagg, a mechanical engineering apprentice, was one among solely 4 ladies in her consumption of 34.
“Whenever you’re in school you are able to do woodwork, however they’ve very restricted sources, they don’t actually promote engineering very a lot and say it’s an excellent job,” she mentioned. “And for women it’s intimidating as a result of it’s a male-dominated surroundings.”
Mark Bolton, principal of the school, mentioned that technical faculties had been working to rebrand the engineering sector, deepening engagement with youngsters and liaising with trade to determine the abilities of the longer term, the place “hybrid engineers” will work not with hammers and wrenches however ‘cobots and robots’.
However after 20 years of real-terms cuts, he provides, funding in offering coaching stays key. “We’re additionally dealing with a abilities crunch,” he famous. “Our highest paid lecturer final March was incomes £34,500 — that’s solely £2,000 greater than these youngsters will earn once they end their four-year apprenticeships.”
One other piece of the puzzle, in accordance with Graham Herries, on the Establishment of Engineering and Know-how, is a disproportionate concentrate on conventional levels over other forms of coaching.
“We’ve inspired the college route however we don’t want all people to have an engineering diploma,” he mentioned. “We’re nonetheless woefully brief throughout the board.”
The federal government has mentioned it’s investing an extra £3.8bn in abilities over the lifetime of this parliament, launching abilities boot camps, the multiply grownup numeracy scheme and a brand new T-level qualification to run alongside A-levels and generate “parity of esteem” for technical schooling.
However UK enterprise additionally wants to speculate extra, in accordance with the chancellor Rishi Sunak who mentioned in his annual CBI dinner speech in Could that employers “spend simply half the European common” coaching their staff.
Amongst Leonardo’s present crop of trainees there may be an acceptance that completely different routes can in the end result in the identical place.
Anthony Chiu, 20, attained 10 As and A*s at GCSE however didn’t apply to college, selecting as a substitute to start out instantly as a Leonardo apprentice.
After seven years, Chiu could have an engineering diploma and find yourself in a lot the identical place as a graduate entrant, simply with out the college money owed. “I all the time wished a level,” he says, “however I used to be drawn to the apprenticeships although all my mates went off to uni.”
For Clarke, who has labored his approach up the corporate, there is no such thing as a magic bullet to handle the UK’s abilities deficit.
He advocates a three-legged strategy that mixes attracting science-qualified individuals again into engineering, stepping into faculties early and broadening the strategy to incorporate ladies and people with wider aptitudes. “It’s not nearly maths,” he mentioned.
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