THERE’S never been a better time to get into engineering, said Mike Jones of Siemens at last Thursday’s launch of the innovative Talent Retention System (TRS) at Gateshead College’s new Skills Academy facility for sustainability, manufacturing and innovation at the Nissan site in Washington.

The projected labour market figures, regionally and nationally, certainly back up Jones’ optimism.

In the North East over 60,000 people currently work in engineering and advanced manufacturing.

Nissan alone will be seeking 15,000 new and up-skilled workers by 2016-7.

Across the sector the need for new recruits in the same period will exceed 8,500. This is, in part, due to growth potential in the sector, stimulated by the significant opportunities in low-carbon manufacture, in part it is also due to a modern neglect to invest in a future workforce.

While there are examples of great practice when it comes to apprenticeships and development, Nissan being one, Siemens too are to open a new training centre later in the year, only 16% of employers in the sector currently employ a share of the total 860 apprentices in the sector – a number woefully short of known demand. Only 4% of workers in the sector are aged 16 to 24.

There is certainly demand from school leavers, apprentice applications in the sector are the subject of massive competition.

This is, in many cases in spite of rather than with the support of schools, some of whom actively prevent engineering companies visiting schools in case pupils choose to do the harder choices of physics due to the risk of lowering the school’s league tables performance.

Any parents considering their children’s career choices should understand that a well-trained engineer in this country is virtually guaranteed a job for life – over a quarter of all employers in the sector are reporting skills shortages.

This mismatch has motivated employers, working with SEMTA and BIS, to establish TRS, a very simple but highly effective web-based system for pairing up skilled engineering workers with vacancies in the sector. The system needs populating to be as effective as its apparent potential, but there is little doubt that it has a real chance of helping successful engineering companies in the region to expand and achieve their optimum success, and also to enable workers at risk or currently employed see where vacancies for decent jobs exist. Check it out at www.talentretention.biz

:: Kevin Rowan, regional secretary, Northern TUC