Promotion plan

We need a marketing plan and expertise to help engineers, who are generally not natural salesmen, to conceive and implement it

On LinkedIn, 2½ years ago, Stephen Tetlow the president of the IMechE asked: “What should we be doing to promote engineering?”, attracting 95 comments. More recently, related questions have been asked about women in engineering, the skills shortage and protection of title. What the great and good in the IMechE have taken from these discussions, I do not know, but I hope it is something useful.

Of late, I have felt uneasy with views in PE that “There’s a sort of gut decision that HS2 is something that we need.” and also a general statement about skills shortages. I believe more thought and rigour needs to go into the IMechE position on such topics. I think the promotion of engineering is fundamental to the work of all engineering institutions, the Engineering Council and Engineering UK (the old ETB), plus the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Yet, what needs to be done to promote engineering has to be clearer. There is considerable concern that nothing is being done to protect the titles of ‘engineer’ and ‘technician’ and the overarching bodies have been supine. Fundamental to the engineering skills shortage is defining it. Smaller companies may not be able to afford sponsorship and in-house training as was commonplace until the 1970s or 1980s and are not well-connected to universities. Many may be in niche markets, where finding the right people is hard as there are so few; a good argument for them to engage with academia. Unsympathetic financiers plus politicians and public servants ignorant of engineering are also a hindrance. Lack of business skills and, in both graduates and those with several years’ experience, a proper appreciation of engineering is another issue. France and Germany are seen as providing far better formal and experiential learning than Britain, where an unfavourable comparison is made with the way doctors and nurses learn in a mix of academic and practical teaching.

Once we have a clear idea about the best way to form engineers for roles that are more diverse than medicine, we shall be in a much better position to promote it wholesale to Government at all levels and ‘retail’ to schools to bring in new technicians and engineers with the right skills in the right quantities. To do that actually requires a marketing plan and bringing in expertise to help engineers, who are generally not natural salesmen, to conceive and implement it. Part of that plan must include learning from medicine, where gender balance has been achieved, whereas only 20% of STEM graduates are women and I suspect a high proportion of them never practise engineering.

Rob Farman, London

Next letter: Is it all for the birds?