Some Problems Just Won't Sort Themselves Out!
It is interesting to wonder whether toys influence children in later years. At Claxton Engineering did all their engineers, when they were children play with Meccano or Lego or other educational toys which encouraged them into making buildings? Certainly as far as we have been concerned these kits have been a wonderful investment. Our son studied engineering at university and although it is some years since he moved away from home, both the Meccano and Lego kits went with him. Last weekend his girlfriend’s nephews stayed with them for a couple of days and my son and the children apparently had a wonderful time playing Lego! In fact a couple of days earlier it was my son’s birthday and his girlfriend bought him the Lego train set and all the accessories! Some children just don’t grow up!
Over the years we have known many engineers in one guise or another and it is interesting that they all enjoyed making things when they were children. We always enjoyed baking and painting and playing with modelling clay. Perhaps it’s a really good excuse for getting messy and leaving chaos everywhere.
Regardless of that fact, engineers are in short supply everywhere with many more vacancies than recruits. Whether or not Claxton Engineering has a shortage of engineers it isn’t possible to know, but given that many other companies in the same industry do have a problem in recruiting qualified engineers it is likely that Claxton Engineering will have the same or a similar problem. This appears to be true across the whole of the UK. Perhaps if more children were encouraged to make things when they are little, you never know, there may be more engineers. Apparently there are going to be many more vacancies in the energy industry when a huge number of alternative energy installers will be required for the installation of solar panels. It has already been suggested that there aren’t enough qualified people to fit these panels. Why are there so many unemployed people, yet so many vacancies which can’t be successfully filled?
It is a difficult set of circumstances and, of course, people qualified in one field can’t just morph into a different industry. In a few years it will be interesting to know whether there has been a specific response to the requirements for engineers and what sort of incentive has needed to be offered in order to gain more recruits. Something does need to happen and it may even need to be that there are more collaborations between companies to ensure that sufficiently high quality engineers are available. Maybe combining forces to enable more joint ventures could be a sensible way forward – only time will tell.