What happened to our engineering industry ?

[jjb1970]

Why in these threads is it invariably "them" and "they", not "our" and "we"?

[Kickstart]

I’d be jubilant if my son or daughter decide to pursue engineering. There’s a serious shortage of engineers in the U.K., so not only is anyone going into itlikely to have an interesting time, because it’s interesting, they are likely to have no difficulty finding work.

Not sure. I have friends with mechanical engineering degrees who have never worked in it. I know people with automotive engineering degrees who do not work in it.

 

That said, think the same applies in IT and probably a lot of other more technical areas.

 

Katy

[jjb1970]

Not all bad news with our youth on the engineering front.

 

My son graduated from Liverpool uni last year with a first class masters degree in Mechanical Engineering - now a graduate trainee with a large oil company.

 

Twin girls at college studying A level maths, physics chemistry & biology. One wants to go into engineering, the other in bio medicine.

 

Born and brought up in Wigan, local state education. Nothing "special" - they are just (bl**dy) hard workers.

 

Want to know what ruined our engineering industry (started many, many years ago) - That "great" British institution - Class. (i.e us and them), and greed.

 

Brit15

Good for them! Looking at much of the news bemoaning the youth of today and telling us that British people struggle to walk upright and talk it's easy to lose sight of all the bright youngsters out there doing far better than I did at their age. I get sick of the negativity towards young people, I think there is an appalling lack of respect for young people in this country.

[rockershovel]

Perhaps.

 

I know of good people, who've had differing experiences - like potential employers only being prepared to look at people who are already working in the same industry, ready trained and doing almost identical jobs.

 

I'm not saying that all employers are like this - or have so little imagination about the potential of credible job applicants - but it's certainly been going on for a number of years.

 

 

Huw.

It’s the Curse Of HR in action.

[Nearholmer]

JJB,

 

Here, here!

 

I do the occasional STEM event at schools, and, until about two years ago was sponsor for the electrical engineering grad training scheme where I worked.

 

Suffice to say that there are a lot of very bright, highly motivated youngsters out there, and it is a joy to work with people who look forward with optimism, rather than backwards with bitterness at worst, and nostalgia at best.

 

I actually think the tide might have turned as regards opportunities for engineering training too, at long last, but there is a huge amount of ground to make up ...... in some branches of engineering there is a huge ‘hole’ in the demographic, resulting from lack of recruitment and training from c1985-2005.

 

Of course, a huge amount depends on where in the country you are ....... there are still areas where many schools are pretty dire, so they don’t motivate children to make the best of their potential, or give them the necessary confidence.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Nearholmer

[62613]

 in some branches of engineering there is a huge ‘hole’ in the demographic, resulting from lack of recruitment and training from c198005.

Oh, yes! I many of the drawing offices I worked in, over the last 10 years at least, I always seemed to be almost the youngest in there, among the draffies at least; I'm 65 in about 5 weeks

 

Having said that, a couple of places I worked at were taking on apprentices, from 2013

[Huw Griffiths]

I do the occasional STEM event at schools, and, until about two years ago was sponsor for the electrical engineering grad training scheme where I worked.

 

Suffice to say that there are a lot of very bright, highly motivated youngsters out there, and it is a joy to work with people who look forward with optimism, rather than backwards with bitterness at worst, and nostalgia at best.

 

I actually think the tide might have turned as regards opportunities for engineering training too, at long last, but there is a huge amount of ground to make up ...... in some branches of engineering there is a huge ‘hole’ in the demographic, resulting from lack of recruitment and training from c1985-2005.

 

That sounds familiar.

 

When I was doing industrial training (1986-7) as part of my electrical engineering HND, there were a number of newspaper reports about the government of the day abolishing the training levy.

 

These articles pointed out the negative effect this would have on the job prospects of people going through the education / HE system - and that this would create a "lost generation" - not that the government of the day seemed even remotely bothered.

 

I experienced the fallout from this myself over the coming years. I know I wasn't alone - but I certainly felt it.

 

 

Huw.

[Zomboid]

Heavy industry and engineering are two very different things. Engineering is mostly a paper (computer) based skill these days, because most engineering is done at the design stages.

Look at the engineers we put on a pedestal as railway enthusiasts - Brunel, Telford, Stephenson, Churchward, Gresley, Stanier, Maunsell, Bulleid... The work we appreciate most them for was done in their heads and in the drawing office. I doubt they ever had much to do with a hammer...

 

Not to deny the importance of the guys who made their ideas a reality, but they are only one link in the engineering chain, and not the one which adds the most value to the process. In the UK we can compete with anyone in the stages where the real difficult stuff happens (most F1 teams are based in the UK and do their engineering here for example), even if we can't so easily compete with the low cost associated with the living and working conditions in a Chinese steel mill.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Zomboid

[APOLLO]

R&D mentioned. British Gas (where I worked all my life in distribution engineering & planning) had wonderful R&D facilities at Killingworth Newcastle (and elsewhere). The Killingworth facility was distribution / pipeline oriented. We attended engineering refresher courses there every 3 or 4 years, saw all the new and future technology first hand before it was thrust upon us on the job. A lot of boffins etc worked there. Now all gone - sad. Not a clue if this type of work is done these days.

 

Over the pond Mr Trump has promised to rebuild America and her manufacturing industries - well good luck to him but he should also tell all who voted for him that all these new industries will be exactly that - brand new, using the latest technology / robots etc - not going to be a lot of jobs there. Same here of course, and in Germany - but as already stated they (Germany) manage industrial matters very differently.

 

I'm quite happy my kids want to go into engineering / science / medicine. True there is no promise of jobs. (but a professor at Salford Uni said a few years ago to prospective students on an open day event there will be jobs in engineering - 200,000 qualified engineers will be retiring over the next 10 years and most will need replacing). 

 

Time will tell, and good luck to all who have children currently in education. Encourage them in whatever they want to do (except Drama and Knitting !!!!!).

 

Brit15

[Ohmisterporter]

When I started my apprenticeship in a textile mill in the early 1960s there were over half a million people employed in the British textile industry. Now I believe there are about thirty thousand, mostly in special fabrics. Similar figures in heavy industries like shipbuilding and steel making. Developing countries quickly discovered that they could weave their own cloth, build ships and cars; not only for their own consumption but for export too. I don't want to get into how Marshall Aid was wasted in the UK and used to build up the destroyed industries of former enemies but look at old pictures of British workshops in motorbike factories and there were still belt driven machine tools into the 1960s. I know, I worked on some. Meanwhile Japanese and German factories were equipped with modern, faster and cleverer machine tools with workers trained to use them. I have seen managers try to introduce new methods that would boost production and save our jobs only for the workforce to walk out. Anyone ever see "NO CASH NO DASH" painted on a factory wall? Last time I saw it was in the Crewe erecting shops on an open day.  Ultimately those factories closed down  Definitely it was an us and them situation and I am not defending the management anywhere. Too many reached their position by working their way up the ladder and knew little about what was going on outside their little world. How many of us heard, "We've always done it like this" ? I've written enough, getting depressed now. 

[jjb1970]

It’s the Curse Of HR in action.

 

No, probably the curse of the hiring manager. HR invariably receive a job spec, desired experience and skill etc from the hiring manager and then look after advertising, arranging interviews, managing the process if an offer is made but the important decisions are taken by the hiring manager.

[Baby Deltic]

I did a four year EITB apprenticeship in engineering back in the 80s. Would I follow that career now? Highly unlikely! In the UK there is no respect for the engineering profession as most companies are sales and marketing driven. 

[jjb1970]

I think children should be encouraged to study those subjects for which they have a passion and aptitude. My own view is that if you enjoy something you'll work hard and have the interest to keep going through the hard times, and that is one of the most important aspects of doing well at work. Get a job you love and often the career aspects look after themselves. Although I know people who have done the opposite of that and done well enough.

On engineering, young people can do an awful lot worse than study engineering. Many of the skills you learn are very transferable, particularly the mathematics (I have former colleagues who went to work for financial institutions) and there are some terrific career opportunities in engineering. I'm not rich and am unlikely to ever become rich but engineering has been kind to me and I've had an interesting and rewarding career so far.

[Robin2]

From my own experience of being "educated" it seems to me that none of the teachers had ever done anything but teach so they  {A} were ill equipped to advise about other careers and {B} were naturally inclined towards academic rather than practical pursuits.

 

And in a similar way radio and television is populated with people whose primary interest is in entertainment and who have little interest in producing engineering technical programs. When they do they usually make them so lighthearted that anyone who knows the subject is utterly disappointed. Bright flashing lights are more important than content.

 

...R

[Dagworth]

From my own experience of being "educated" it seems to me that none of the teachers had ever done anything but teach so they  {A} were ill equipped to advise about other careers and {B} were naturally inclined towards academic rather than practical pursuits.

 

And in a similar way radio and television is populated with people whose primary interest is in entertainment and who have little interest in producing engineering technical programs. When they do they usually make them so lighthearted that anyone who knows the subject is utterly disappointed. Bright flashing lights are more important than content.

 

...R

And our politicians have no experience of anything other than being politicians... Grrrrrrr

 

Whereas industry managers nowadays know absolutely sod all about the business they are managing, just how to pass an exam at university.

 

Andi

[Ozexpatriate]

There's two topics being intermingled here:

1. Heavy industrial manufacturing
2. The engineering profession

Though connected, they really are distinctly different topics.

 

By it's nature, heavy industrial manufacturing follows cheap labour. Even in an economy as large as the US, the relative amount of heavy industrial manufacturing done in the US (versus the rest of the world) is dramatically less than it was in the late 19th or early to mid 20th centuries. Other than having more legacy business the US is not much different from Britain in this regard. Nostalgia for those dark Satanic mills is an odd concept but not unknown in the US. The town of Braddock, Pennsylvania (site of a Seven Years War battlefield and named for the slain British commander) and later home to one of Andrew Carnegie's mills is a poster child for urban decay.

 

The engineering profession suffers from perception, but quite differently in the US versus the UK.

 

The prestige of the engineering profession has long suffered in the UK relative to other parts of the world. The money (The City, The Temple, Whitehall, etc) look down on the engineering profession with anachronistic classism that more properly belongs in a Jane Austen novel.  In this light engineers are viewed as either crazy-haired, lab-coated boffins or grey smocked, oil stained technicians from the working classes.

 

In other parts of the world, the engineering profession is recognized by the money as a source of innovation, and, by extension, wealth.

 

I take no ownership for this perception. Right or wrong it was imparted to me by British engineers working in engineering companies in the US as much as 30 years ago. Perhaps things have changed?

 

The engineering profession all starts with solid formative education in the physical sciences and mathematics in high-school, now popularly labelled "STEM". Despite "nerds" finally having their revenge in popular culture, STEM education remains uncool and seen as "too hard" compared with other options. It is woefully underrepresented by women and minority students, leading to ignorant charges that 'tech' companies have discriminatory hiring practices.

 

It is so relatively unpopular that US companies hire an enormous part of their professional engineering workforce from overseas. The graduate programs at engineering Universities in the US are largely attended by Asian students (using a geographical, and not an ethnic definition of "Asian").

 

In this country it is nevertheless, a lucrative and rewarding profession despite the reluctance of students to pursue it. I suspect that is not very different in the UK.

Edited April 3, 2018 by Ozexpatriate

[bike2steam]

 I've written enough, getting depressed now. 

 

In the early 90's I got so depressed with engineering as I was made redundant yet again as another company I worked for closed for good, and I finished with the 'trade' professionally - ah well such is life !  

[coachmann]

I doubt if today's workforce would relish the idea of working on stone floors in heavy engineering factories or indeed any of the engineering companies I knew as a boy.  They were as cold inside as outside in the yard and not for nothing did the men wear clogs and heavy boots. My experience of them while accompanying my dad on Saturday mornings were Adamsons in Hyde and Duckinfield, and Robinson & Kershaw. No wonder most of the workers went deaf over the years.

 

As far as I could tell, things carried as as they always had done until the mid 1960's when jobs began to hemorrhage quick-style in all the traditional industries during Harold Wilson's tenancy of No.10.  In many ways, the reluctant 'workforce' had been carried by successive Governments who considered it their job to provide work for the populace. This made it easy for Unions to do a spot of blackmailing every few months. It couldn't last of course, and by 1980 the Thatcherites were telling all and sundry that no one owed them a living. The dying carcass that had been ailing since the 1930's but had gained momentum in the early 1950's was finally buried.

 

There is another story about shipping our old machinery abroad and assisting foreign competition, but someone else can tell that one...

Edited April 3, 2018 by coachmann

[Barry O]

Why in these threads is it invariably "them" and "they", not "our" and "we"?

Perhaps it may be because as an engineer in a large company which everyone regarded as being our company we found out that the faceless bean counters and city money grabbers told us what we could or couldn't do as engineers.

 

And, well what do you know, they were quick to sell out when offered money by more faceless bean counters and city money grabbers.

 

Perhaps people are unaware but Engineers can bean count, can understand profit and loss etc so we could spot who they are but were powerless to stop them ruining our company.

 

Baz

[APOLLO]

Change - That's the key, and boy have I seen it in many industries.

 

After my 5 year gas engineering apprenticeship in 1974 I was posted to nearby Warrington, the district included Widnes Runcorn Frodsham & Helsby, we worked occasionaly in St Helens and Wigan (my home town). We worked closely with industry old and new regarding gas supplies. Pilkingtons glassworks at St Helens was so big and important a customer we had engineers specifically allocated to them. The chemical works at Widnes & Runcorn along with the remaining foundries were going through mega change (1975 on). I've witnessed lots of closures and yes new works also over the years. These new works were at the beginning of computerisation / automation in the 70's. No workers with clogs here !!

 

A drive around these towns today and it's a whole new scene. Not exactly industrial desolation - the Victorian era places went many years ago and are now either housing, retail or (a few) new factories. There are a still quite a number of large modern works, Pilkingtons (now foreign owned) has a large newish plant (recently sand trains from Kings Lynn have been introduced). Those who work in these plants are by and large skilled technicians - little need for heavy labour any more.

 

As to the future - who knows ? - just more change that's for certain.

 

Brit15

[Kickstart]

I think children should be encouraged to study those subjects for which they have a passion and aptitude.

Tend to agree, but peoples choices are skewed by perceptions of pay. Programming suffers this (with it somehow still seen as high paying) with a result that a lot of those doing related degrees having little interest in it (not that many would get a job in it once they graduate anyway)

 

Katy

[pete_mcfarlane]

But why only "British" disease?  Why did the same thing not seem to affect other countries?  Is it somehow genetic?  Or maybe we're just too interested in tradition, which some might say is the curse of this country, and don't want to think about the future?

 

DT

Don't forget that a large chunk of the media (and opposition politicians) will have you believe that the UK is a barren wasteland, and the rest of Europe is a magical paradise. 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Actually the UK is near the front of the wave in adaption to the future. You don't have to be very farseeing to recognise that mass employment in 'physically making stuff' is a dwindling opportunity. Automations various are going to increasingly dominate in this sector. It's the brainwork occupations that will secure future advantage in employment, and there the UK does rather well producing all kinds of imaginative service products. Led the world with smokestacks, now got to lead the world in 'soft' stuff.

 

We were remarking on another thread how bizarre is it that there's always a crowd of foreign visitors queueing for the platform 9 3/4 barrow at KX. All 'manufactured' by one woman with a word processer (and an inability to remember 'Euston'). In two hundred years time, 'we' will be moaning about the good old days when our children's literature effortlessly secured such a large share of the global market. Nothing stands still. The key thing is to trust in the cleverness of our future innovators, who will be doing other now unimaginable 'stuff' to turn a penny.

[2mmMark]

I remain eternally grateful that I was taught to use tools at at school, woodworking and metalworking. I may not have selected engineering as a career but eventually in my chosen career, I was eventually deemed a software engineer.

 

It seems very poor that children are not educated in this sort of thing anymore. My teacher said to us "if you don't pay attention now, you'll be forever having to get someone in to do the simplest of jobs".  He was so right, thanks "DDGG" (who was and is still a Scalefour modeller).

 

A grasp of materials and how to use them came in handy 10 years ago when I was working on Terminal 5.  One of my assignments was to assess the mounting of display screens. Let's just say that the contractors were "value engineering" their work...

 

I have now seen my chosen industry largely offshored, purely as a means of cutting costs.  The quality of the offshored product is frustatingly variable but it's made to work sufficiently well enough to satisfy to tick a box that says "job done". Anyone coming along later to maintain it is likely to have "issues". The managers responsible for this will have long moved on after collecting their bonuses.

 

And that is the problem.  Short-termism.  It's killed many UK industries and will no doubt continue to do so.

[jjb1970]

We live in an elective democracy (of sorts) and all have a responsibility for our actions (or lack of). To blame the state of the country and industry on others is too easy. If people don’t like the direction of politics they can join political parties or political organisations outside the party system to make their voices heard. In industry, if people think they can run a company better then they can strive to attain managerial and leadership positions and make a difference. Clearly people don’t like activist investors when it comes to venture capitalists, but people can pressurise pension funds and other investors to be activist in promoting a different corporate model. The success or otherwise of a company is linked to its workforce, how many workers bemoan the state of the companies they work for whilst doing the minimum needed to stay out of trouble? To blame “them” and pretend that “we” are passive observers (or perhaps victims looking at the tone of much of this debate) is in my opinion an abdication of personal responsibility. If you do what you can and the majority is against you then c’est la vie, you just have to live with it but at least you know you’ve done your bit. There is an assumption that all British managers are either rapacious asset strippers or brain dead imbeciles. I’m sure there are British managers meeting those descriptions, I’m also sure plenty don’t. Most of the companies I’ve worked for have been managed by people who didn’t meet the sort of generalisations on this thread, and funnily enough the one that did meet them to some extent wasn’t a British company.