Wowgloucestershire – job sector factsheet Prospects 2012 ©
ENGINEERING: CURRENT JOB MARKET
· Women are under-represented in the engineering sector – the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in Europe: 9% of UK engineering professionals compared with 18% in Spain and 26% in Sweden, for instance. Only 4% of current engineering apprentices are female
· There is also a problem with attracting large numbers of young people into the profession, even though there are excellent chances to progress – this is partly due to fewer people studying maths and physics at a higher level (although numbers have recently risen)
· The Institution of Engineering and Technology shows that one in five employers is concerned that they will not be able to find suitable engineering candidates to recruit in the next few years – engineering in the UK is not always seen as being particularly high status, which could be one reason why people are not as attracted to it
· Overall, salaries inengineering may not seem as high as in some sectors but hour per hour, engineering can pay as well as many other professions – and people with professional engineering qualifications often head up huge companies. Also, well qualified and experiencedworkers can command high daily salaries, especially in the oil processing sector
· There are also plenty of opportunities to travel overseas on short or longer term engineering projects
· Engineering and manufacturing are strongly linked – manufacturing is one of the biggest employers of engineers and, even though it has been in decline for many years, it is still vital to the UK economy
· Important manufacturing sectorsinclude aerospace and defence (UK defence exports are worth £4 billion), car production (although the fortunes of car manufacturers vary every few years), pharmaceuticals, and the production of food and drinks (which is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector)
· Around half a million people are employed in the food sector. Most companies are small and so unlikely to employ engineers but in the larger ones (such as Allied Bakeries, Tate and Lyle, and Coco-Cola), engineers are needed
· The recession has affected the manufacturing sector, and numerous major companies have seen job losses in the last few years, including Canadian train manufacturers Bombardier in Derby, pharmaceutical company Pfizer (losing more than 2000 staff) and Britain’s largest manufacturer, and Europe’s largest arms dealer, BAE,losingaround 9000 jobs at sites across the UK
ENGINEERING: FUTURE TRENDS
· Increasing fears surrounding the environment mean that engineers in many sectors will need to come up with ways to save energy and prevent pollution e.g. alternatively fuelled vehicles, environmentally-friendly food packaging, roofs that keep in the heat
· Some parts of the industry could suffer because of environmental issues, such as the increasing cost of raw materials, the shortage of crops (affecting the foodmanufacturingindustry) and ashortage of rain forest plants affectingthe pharmaceutical industry
· Green technologies are worth £3 trillion to the world economy. The UK hopes to become one of the world leaders in this sector
· Nuclear generated electricity will also have a role to play. Building a new wave of nuclear power plants would have considerable economic benefit and jobs for the UK – at present, the government has proposed 8 sites where new nuclear power plants could be built (this followed the nuclear disaster in Japan)
· Retiring workers will need to be replaced e.g. in the aerospace and defence industry, over the next 20 years, close to 60% of the workforce will retire
· According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, predicted shortages are likely to be most acute in energy, utilities and civil engineering
· Although the UK is still the 6th or 7th (views differ) largest manufacturer (after the USA, China, Japan, Germany and Italy), our share in the market will gradually decline as growing economies throughout the worldbecome dominant
· However, Britain is likely to continue to excel in some areas,particularly in those involving advanced materials (which means growing opportunities for materials and chemical engineers), biometrics (such as fingerprint readers and retinal scanners) and robotic engineering (e.g. robotic vacuum cleaners)
· In the longer term, demand for pharmaceuticals is expected to continue to be strong as the proportion of national income spent on healthcare tends to increase with wealth and a rapidly aging population
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Wowgloucestershire – job sector factsheet Prospects 2012 ©
ENGINEERING: THE PICTURE IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE
· Engineering and manufacturing (including factories and business headquarters) are key sectors in terms of staff numbers and/or importance to the Gloucestershire economy. Official statistics from just a few years ago indicate that around 15% of the jobs in Gloucestershire are in manufacturing (which is a major employer of engineers) – much higher than the national average
· The work is often hi-tech – a number of employers in Gloucestershire are involved with the medical, aerospace and defence sectors
· Research from Gloucestershire First carried out with local employers shows that there are fewer lower-skilled jobs than in the past and that applicants don’t always have the right skills/qualifications. Engineering graduates and skilled craftspeople with a positive, realistic attitude are needed because when the economy recovers it’s vital that there will be enough suitably qualified people
· Like everywhere, the recession has had an impact and some of the major companies with bases in Gloucestershire have had tomake people redundant and close factories
· However, BBC Gloucestershire recently reported that some companies are currently struggling to recruit. Moog, for instance, say that they have a shortage of all types of engineers, including production and manufacturing. Some of the major companies have ‘paired up’ with local schools to show students what modern manufacturing and engineering is all about
Examples of engineering employers in Gloucestershire
· GE Aviation (aerospace), Cheltenham, Gloucester
· Moog Controls (aerospace), Tewkesbury
· L-3 TRL (defence), Tewkesbury
· British Energy (part of EDF), Barnwood
· Spirax Sarco (steam engineering), Cheltenham
· Renishaw (hi-tech products), Wotton-under-Edge
· Messier Dowty (aerospace landing gear), Gloucester
· Unilever (consumer products), Barnwood
· GSK (consumer products), Coleford
· Mabey Group (girder bridges), Lydney
ENGINEERING: FINDING OUT MORE
General
www.tomorrowsengineers.org.uk/careers.cfm
Tomorrow's Engineers – useful careers information
www.semta.org.uk/
The Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies
www.wisecampaign.org.uk/
Women into science, engineering and construction – careers information for girls
Specific careers in the industry
www.automotive-skills.org.uk/
Institute of the motor industry
www.cogent-ssc.com/
Sector skills Council for the oil and gas, chemicals, nuclear, petroleum and polymer industries
www.euskills.co.uk/
Sector Skills Council for the electricity, gas, waste management and water industries
www.icheme.org/
Institution of Chemical Engineers
www.materials-careers.org.uk/
Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining
www.imeche.org/Home
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/
NHS Careers – for clinical engineering
www.summitskills.org.uk/
Sector Skills Council for the Building Services Engineering
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