An aerospace skills crisis is looming in Britain because insufficient numbers of young people are entering the industry. What options are available to manufacturers?
Increased needs for licensed maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) engineers and high-level skills to support emerging technologies are some of the challenges facing the UK aerospace industry in the coming years, according to the Science, Engineering, Manufacturing Technologies Alliance (SEMTA).
The numbers of young people entering the industry will be insufficient to meet future demand for high-level skills, according to SEMTA’s analysis of the industry skills situation, so many existing workers will need additional training and redeployment to meet industry needs.
As part of its research to prepare a skills development blueprint for the sector over the next 10 years, which has been agreed with leading trade unions, SEMTA discovered that lack of skills availability was hampering the productivity of many UK companies and that 33% of aerospace companies in England had vacancies they found hard to fill.
“Companies are starting to understand the key skills they have to acquire to operate in the global arena,” says North West Aerospace Alliance (NWAA) executive director Martin Wright. “Project management, risk management and leadership skills are very important. The shift to demand-led training is absolutely vital, so we can plug skills gaps where we see them appearing.”
Representing more than 800 industry companies and organisations in the north west of England, the NWAA last month agreed a partnership with the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC), one element of which will be to help deliver the skills needs identified by SEMTA.
Growth markets for the UK industry, says SEMTA, include composite materials technologies, computer modelling and simulation, mechanical and electrical subsystems, project management and research and development.
These are the skills that UK companies need to start developing to compete on an international level, SEMTA believes.
Although technical skills are in demand, development in more intangible areas such as project management is also important.
SEMTA says that more people working in the industry will need to be educated to degree level in the future. Around 30% of aerospace employees hold that level of qualification and the SEMTA report says this needs to be increased to almost 50%. “Attracting young people into the industry is an issue,” says Wright. “There are softer options for people in the labour market and we have to do a lot more work in promoting engineering.”
As well as encouraging more young people to enter the industry in technical roles, SEMTA estimates around half of the workers now in the industry will need to be retrained in the next five years. Feasibility studies on introducing a programme of adult apprenticeships, allowing workers to train in additional skills on the job, are being carried out.
“There is a lot of work about at the moment,” says Wright. “Now is the time for companies to invest in skills. If there is a downturn, companies will need to have people with strong managerial skills to get out of potential trouble.”
- flight.workingweek@rbi.co.uk
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Source: Flight International
