Spring Is In The Air

Spring is in the Air

Here we are over a quarter of the way through a new year. Who has kept their new year’s resolutions? Are things looking up? Better or worse than expected?

With the government announcing it will pump billions into the construction arena for the next five years, this will enable a sense of optimism to return to our industry – won’t it? The construction industry is very important to the UK for more reasons than most realise. When the car industry collapsed a couple of years ago, it didn’t take long for the ‘anti-car’ government and councils’ to realise that it was an essential spine of British industry. 

It affected 1 in 8 jobs in the UK, so the government had to introduce the car scrappage scheme to help the industry sell vehicles, which in turn aided the suppliers, caterers, health services, insurance companies, banks etc etc. In fact it has now been realised that the car industry is bigger now than it ever has been. 

The UK is the second largest manufacturer of cars in Europe.

What has this got to do with the construction industry? Well, that is even bigger and affects 1 in 5 people in the UK. When house-builders build, councils can loan from banks and get income from the builders, which means people move into the new houses, and more jobs are created, new roads, facilities and infrastructure, and employers move into the area, and then the circle of influence grows and grows.

The government also announced that Britain’s economy will ONLY grow by 0.6%. That is good; look at Spain, Italy, Greece. 0.6% is growth. The economy is growing. Turn that 0.6 into pound notes and it’s an increase every month of £16bn turnover. How great is that for a small island in the middle of a world cash crisis? 

OK so we’re not the States or Germany, but then we’re not Japan or China who are in negative growth (to use an Americanism). We are the world financial capital, and it’s the financial powerhouses that are in trouble, so we’ve done well as a country so far.

Why is this relevant to this column? Well, there is still a major skills shortage in the UK, we have vacancies that we cannot fill. Our sister company We Are Recruitment is now recruiting teachers from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland to fill much needed roles in schools in the UK. In those countries, teachers have taken pay cuts and reduced working conditions. The UK has not – and it has an increase in job roles.

However, the reason for the skills shortage in UK engineering is because the salaries and conditions offered for skilled engineers is below what other countries offer. Councils have signed up to supply companies which stifle mark-ups for agencies, apparently to get the best deals. However, many agencies are shunning these councils and their supply companies as the profit line is negative. 

These arrangements are also putting engineers off working for councils. It is also affecting private companies too. Very soon the UK will have to look at this, as generations are now shunning our industry, and this is bad for 1 in 5 people!

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Rest & Relaxation

Rest & Relaxation

So everyone in the Engineering sector had a nice break over the festive period? Well I suppose most consultants did, and those in the public sector, but a fair few engineers and technicians worked harder over Christmas keeping roads clear, drains unblocked, electricity running and Santa’s sleigh oiled and squeak free! 

For the rest of the population it was a time to eat, drink and enjoy. That is often done at a nice restaurant or hotel over the festive period. So do we spare a thought for all the cooks, waitresses, maitre d’s and bar tenders’? I never did until now.

Find The Engineer recently acquired the company Better Recruitment, which specialises in hospitality and catering staff, both permanent and temporary. This was incorporated into our We Are Recruitment brand. Well when acquiring the business we did not think too much about the time of year. Most times when putting engineers into careers or payrolling contract engineers, Christmas is a time when the timesheets are scarce and the panic of payments for all engineers on a Friday are eased. However for hospitality and catering staff on a contract this time of year was the busiest, and boy did we know it.

The payroll and collating the timesheets was not a problem, the main problem was the rota that the staff were on. The timesheets would arrive at any time of the day and night, the staff had trouble getting timesheets and contracts signed by shift managers too. Our problem also, was that the banks were shut and so money transfers had to be planned in advance, which meant a lot of educated guessing on how many hours a person may do over the holidays. You cannot afford to underpay a contractor, but you cannot afford to overpay them. Literally. Wow! What a learning curve.

So time for a rest in January. No not really. This is the time that that strange phenomenon occurs whereby the government expects all its agencies and local authorities to spend all their money before the end of March or risk losing funding the following financial year. 

This means we have already been inundated with calls from clients asking for short term contractors with a lot of experience to help finish designs and schemes and help get them built. Luckily so far, we have many good engineers on our books, and as we know them all personally, it is easy for us to put the right ones with the right clients. This is a very busy time of year for us, whilst the hospitality industry has slowed a little giving us breathing space in that area. 

But wait, under our We Are Recruitment brand, we supply teachers too, and now the new term has started and a lot of teachers are ill and schools need temps quickly!! All hands to the pumps! I’m looking forward to a summer holiday if I have the time to have one! 

Happy new year!

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Interview With Bloodhound SSC

Interview with Bloodhound SSC

Find The Engineer Presents the 1000mph Car!

    

The British have held the land speed record for 70 of the 112 years of its existence. These cars epitomise the highest possible levels of technology for their age and the very high speeds achieved represent true pioneering and engineering excellence. The current record is held by Richard Noble’s Thrust SSC driven by Andy Green. Now, there is a new challenger from Bristol who is looking to break his own record. Richard Noble, again, is heading up the Bloodhound SSC project.

Find The Engineer’s Mark Ralph caught up with long time friend Mark Elvin, who has worked in the past for Westland Helicopters, Williams F1 team and then designed race transporters for F1. Now a Bloodhound design engineer, Mark is designing many parts of the vehicle including its famous fin.

“This is by far the best job I’ve ever had. It’s truly mad! It uses all your brainpower and knowledge as an engineer to overcome huge hurdles on aerodynamics as well as looking to keep the vehicle as light as possible lightweight and on budget – which varies.”

The Thrust SSC car driven by RAF pilot Andy Green was the first land vehicle to break the sound barrier, establishing the first ever supersonic land speed record at 763.035mph in October 1997. A record which still stands.

Richard Noble who ran the Thrust SSC project decided to build the Bloodhound SSC to break his own record stop the Americans from taking it & above all, to act as a showcase for engineering as a career “You see”, continues Mark “1000mph on land is the next Concorde moment”.

The car is named after the Bristol Bloodhound missile, which could do over Mach1 in 2.6 seconds from takeoff & shares the same chief aerodynamicist, Ron Ayers.

As an iconic engineering programme it is run through schools, with the hope it will stimulate a new generation of engineers. “I have been to auto shows and events, including my daughters’ school and the excitement from everyone you talk to is immense.”

The research element of the programme to produce the first 1000mph car has taken far longer to develop than expected but now the Bloodhound team has a safe and viable design for the world’s first 1000mph 133,000hp car.

With companies, schools, universities and colleges taking part, the team plans to build and roll-out in late 2013, UK runway testing early 2013 in preparation for low speed test runs in South Africa late 2014 (up to 850mph, taking a new land speed record in the process) & the full fat, 1000mph runs during 2015.

The car (yes it has four wheels and a steering wheel – of sorts), uses a formula 1 car engine just to power its rocket oxidizer pump, a hybrid rocket  and an EJ200 jet engine from a Typhoon fighter plane, but the Bloodhound SSC shape is completely different to anything seen before. The car needs to minimise the cross-sectional area to minimise drag, whilst remaining ‘lift neutral’ at all speeds to ensure the car stays safely on the ground.

“In the design, packaging of all the components including Andy (the driver) has been a difficult issue. He and his cockpit have ended up just under the EJ200 intake, with the cockpit external shape being a part of the all important intake shock management structure. Andy has lost out on comfort value there, but that’s one of the compromises that have been necessary in developing a Mach 1.4 car.”

Land-speed record cars have had big fins to ensure good stability. But too much fin means a car which will severely be affected by increased drag and not enough fin means that the car will be directionally unstable. The designers believe that Bloodhound SSC will have excellent directional stability.

So will they do it? If you spend a short time with any of the team you will be convinced they will easily break 1000mph. “My only worry is not if we will reach 1000mph, but what I will do after this. Where can you go from here?”

Good point Mark, so what do you do when you’re not travelling the UK or making the fastest car in the world?

“It’s difficult to unwind, but normal stuff. Sleep! Beating you on the Xbox, swimming, cycling, be a husband to a lovely wife & being a taxi in a normal car, to my two lovely daughters.”

The Bloodhound SSC team are touring the UK and were based near the SS Great Britain in Bristol – in a shed! Now they are in large premises in Avonmouth near the Severn. 

Visit their website for updates. www.bloodhoundssc.com

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Great British Engineering

Great British Engineering

In the last blog I stated I would talk about great British engineering projects currently ongoing. 

I had lots of people recommending products and schemes to me. It is a really good feeling to know that the UK does still manufacture and create things. A different story to what we hear and see in the media. 

It was really difficult to narrow down the three I wanted to discuss, and of course I have to mention the Olympics; a good showroom of engineering achievements. 

As this is was originally for TEC magazine, it wouldn’t make sense to mention non-traffic related schemes, so in reverse order my top 3 exciting engineering projects are: 

Trampower’s new green and commercially viable tram and rail set up. 

Based in the northwest, Trampower have developed a tram that is half the weight of the trams in current use and the rails can be installed with minimal foundation and construction effort. 

The reason this project is exciting, is that Trampower uses existing technology and parts and utilises them to create an amazingly good looking and truly green system. Small towns will hopefully realise they can afford this system in their urban landscape. 

No 2 is the Brompton bike. 

Yes its engineering, look at the folding parts, and the beautiful design, and it can be put on a bus or train and used on our roads safely. The Brompton has been around for a while, but only recently it is an export champion. This British bike is selling well outside the UK, and people should pay more attention to its engineered brilliance. 

At first glance it looks like a child’s bike wheels have been fixed to a scaffold frame, but its genius is in its lightweight and how it folds up ridiculously small. Made in UK too, and used on British highways, though not by enough people in my opinion. 

Lastly, and this engineering encompasses everything about British engineering in my eyes. 

A car that involves truly mad but genius engineers, a truly mad, creative leader, built in a shed (literally), and has ridiculous but cool written all over it. 

Yes, I present the Bloodhound SSC project. It really is built in a shed on one of Bristol’s quaysides, it’s made from parts donated by British companies, it is being used to showcase engineering to schools and colleges, and it really is a car (with an F1 engine and rocket strapped on mind) that is going to go 1000mph in South Africa to break the land-speed record. 

What I really love about this project is that Richard Noble who headed the past project that broke the record is doing this to break his own one! Madness. 

But fantastic engineering and creativity all in one um… shed!

        

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Institutional Failure

Institutional Failure

In the last blog I mentioned how there are more technical vacancies than engineers to fill them in the UK. 

So why is this? 

The first reason a lot of people give me is that not enough people are coming through the colleges and universities with engineering qualifications, and this is correct. 

However more people are leaving the engineering field at the beginning of their career and also leaving early towards the end of their career rather than not going for a career in engineering in the first place. As an industry the whole engineering sector including colleges, employers, developers, governments, local councils, recruitment companies and institutions need to focus on the real reasons why there is a shortage. 

There is not just one answer. 

Many women I’ve known in the engineering sector have left as they felt it was chauvinistic. Having witnessed this I can’t deny engineering has a male dominated ‘old boys’ feel in some cases. Women are also not promoted or paid as well as men. 

Unlike I.T, leisure or retail industries, engineering is not seen as ‘hip’ enough for teenagers to consider it as a career. 

I didn’t, I was never cool at school, but really wanted to look for something cool for a career, I just fell into engineering by being naturally good at numbers, designing and problem solving. Something I and other business owners have to do every day. 

Engineering Institutions traditionally represent the engineering employer and employee. There role was, and still is to lobby government, academies and engineering sectors in improving working practices, standards and  qualifications. However, today that is not enough. Institutions need to work closely with colleges, universities and employers in encouraging people into the industry, and work even harder to keep them there. 

Another role institutions need to do is liaise more with recruitment companies to promote the commercial sides of the sectors. Engineers need to know about commercial practices. Recruitment companies need to do a lot more in working with colleges and universities to encourage graduates to take roles in engineering. 

Even more than that, institutions have to be going into schools at an early stage and make pupils excited about engineering. To make people excited about engineering institutions, government, recruitment companies and academies need to stop thinking of engineering as just road building, metal shaping, telephone fixing and boring (in both senses). 

Engineering involves rockets, inventions, technologies, nature, practical science and much more. Institutions must modernise fast, change their working practices, keep up with the technology and discoveries of tomorrow, then start preaching to convert. 

My next blog will discuss the exciting engineering projects being undertaken in the UK this year.

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It's All Doom & Gloom

It’s All Doom And Gloom

Recession? Recession? We’re apparently in the second part of a double dip recession and the doom mongers are shouting again!

This is not just a recession, but the worst ever apparently. You could say not just a recession but an M&S recession. With M&S’s projected profits down by 1%, Clinton Cards toppling over and Greece all over the floor. Greece is no longer the word! 

Public sector staff have been on strike annoyed with having a pay freeze whilst the private sector quietly suffers pay reductions. Cuts, cuts and more cuts in everything, and banks are not lending, with mortgages almost impossible to get.

Let’s look at the recession in another way. A recession is a natural occurrence of free trade. Things that go up, must come down. So, there are no cuts, there are savings being made due to overspending. Mortgages are difficult to get as banks are stopping people spending what they can’t afford. 

A recession is a way of clearing dead wood and spring cleaning the financial dirt away. So from another view, M&S may have set their targets too high in the first instance. 

Do we really expect Clinton Cards to never close shops when the online ‘design-a-card’ industry is flourishing? Will no one ever go to Greece again on holiday and spend money there? In reality, public spending is up compared to 3 years ago, salaries are rising now by 1% and there are more vacancies than unemployed in the UK.

Wow! That last statement seems strange. However, as a recruitment company specialising in engineering jobs, we have more vacancies than we can shake a stick at. Good hourly rates, great salaries, great benefits and the jobs are real career progressors. 

The problem is all the vacancies are for qualified and skilled specialisms. And that is where the gap is. There are not enough qualified engineers and technicians out there to fill the gaps. Many councils are filling the gaps as they have to get projects completed. 

However they are often filling them with under qualified personnel. They have no choice. Private organisations cannot do this as they need to achieve profits so they cannot spend large sums on training, so they suffer with the shortage.

The answer is that if councils and private companies offered better rates and salaries then the vacancies would be filled. Right?

But we are in a recession, a time for clearing out the chaff. Put up salaries to fill that gap and prices go up, leading to excessive spending. In the short term this would benefit the economy, but maybe a spring clean would be round the corner sooner rather than later.

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