Comment

Railway engineering finding solutions to experience gap

Maintaining and enhancing the UK’s railways will get harder and more expensive if we do not address a growing experience gap across all of engineering, argues Blane Judd, CEO of EngTechNow, a campaign that is raising awareness of the importance of engineering technicians to the economy.

Everyone knows there is a skills gap across STEM sectors. Everyone knows, as well, that there is a major challenge to attract good people into engineering. But after a long recession, engineering faces a related challenge that must be addressed. 

During the downturn, engineering lost a lot of good people with a lot of valuable experience. We also saw companies freeze recruitment while there was a shortage of work to train them on, and freeze money with which to pay for apprenticeships. 

Fortunately, apprenticeships have rebounded, but engineering is facing a lack of people capable of taking first steps into supervisory and project management roles now that the economy has returned to growth. We simply did not hire many people five years ago who would now be ready to step up. 

This was a message that came out strongly from our white paper ‘The Experience Gap: the unspoken skills gap’, and from the discussions this triggered among industry leaders and politicians in Parliament. However, solutions are emerging that can overcome the experience gap if they are adopted more widely. 

Many of the best examples of progress can be found in railway engineering. It was TfL, for example, that took action with its supply chain and showed how big an impact this could have. Its 2010 framework required participating companies to run technician apprenticeships that would fully prepare young people for long careers. This led to a number of companies with little experience of running apprenticeship programmes coming together and working with colleges all over the country in a consortium that now takes on 300 technician apprentices per year.

This is not the only example of a practical solution emerging from within industry. That said, the experience gap is not all about getting new people in. It is partly about making effective use of people we already have. 

Amey’s transport division is doing just that. Amey is expanding its workforce quickly to meet growing demand for its services. As it does so, it is also building professional registration into its strategy to improve flexibility across its workforce. As its professional excellence director Richard Butterfield told me, there should be nothing to stop a good project manager or team leader moving from highways engineering to rail operations and back again. 

That approach opens up great career opportunities for people and enables companies to meet demands across many sectors more effectively. 

To do this, however, means asking clients to place a lot of trust in the professionalism and capability of staff. So how does a company verify that the technicians fitting its train carriages, or replacing track on busy railways, have the professional competence they need? 

For some time we have seen a growth in ‘man-marking’ to ensure trust across projects and through supply chains – effectively watching over every shoulder as work is done. This system of task-based authorisation is highly inefficient, however, tying up valuable engineering talent that should be put to delivery. 

For major projects like Crossrail and Thames Tideway, and for large companies like Amey, WSP and Carillion – where such inefficiencies would add up to significant cost and re-working implications – that is not acceptable. Fortunately, they are driving a solution to ease this burden. 

Moving away from task-based authorisation, these companies are focusing on verification of whole-job-competence, working with EngTechNow to support technicians to achieve EngTech registration. 

EngTech is recognised in international treaties, much as chartered status is. It is also verified externally by professional engineering institutions and, ultimately, the Engineering Council. Technicians are also required to undertake continuous professional development to maintain their EngTech status. 

This gives companies an opportunity to identify roles and responsibilities – and the technicians who hold them – to verify their professionalism and technical knowledge not just internally, but to their clients. 

Changing the culture in this way also offers other benefits, especially for technicians. By creating a level of technicians who have proven their professional status, new rungs of the career ladder can be opened up to a new pool of talent. That is good for technicians who aspire to achieve great things in their careers, and it is vital to an industry facing an experience gap with the potential to hurt the UK’s international competitiveness.

Tell us what you think – have your say below or email [email protected]