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15th May 2019, 09:02 | #71 | |
This is my second home
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Construction and bricklaying? I thought we were discussing UK based enginering/manufacturing vs the same being moved abroad. Construction trades will always be executed in the UK, be it a percentage of the workers may be imported if there is a local shortage. This is until we start to import pre-assembled houses with electrics and plumbing pre-installed. As for the zeroes, it still does not chaneg my point whether there are 135 applicants per job or 1000. There are far fewer quality jobs than skilled individuals available and looking to fill those jobs. There is no skills shortage in high-value engineering and manufacturing in the UK. It's a myth spread by those who do not wish to emplyoy in the UK or the business owners who do not wish to invest in their workforce. |
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15th May 2019, 09:05 | #72 |
This is my second home
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15th May 2019, 09:40 | #73 | |
Gets stuck in
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However I cannot agree with your comment that there is no shortage of skilled people. I've been retired for 7 years and not interested in going back to the grindstone, but I get emails regularly from agencies offering me engineering and design jobs. The employers are waking up to the fact that a new piece of paper doesn't make the owner of it an engineer etc. and have the knowledge and ability to do the job expected of them. This was something I often found out myself and had much better success with employing a young apprentice trained engineer than an unproved engineering graduate. They had the theories but couldn't get them to work, the apprentice trained could. This and not spending enough on training and apprenticeships means there's a real shortage of home grown skills base left to call upon. With a much reduced industrial manufacturing capacity and the reduction of investment in manufacturing running it down why would companies invest in training. Hence our reliance on EU skilled workers much cheaper, no training budgets, and work for less. |
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15th May 2019, 10:22 | #74 | |
This is my second home
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Thanks for your excellent post, Robun. My experience of graduates has been the opposite - every one of them has excelled and I have worked with fresh graduates every year. In my view the key differentiator is whether the employer expects to take someone with the fundamental engineering skills and train them for the specific job or expects to find applicants who will turn up and start doing the job effectively from day 1. Our approach was the former and we never had a single graduate who turned out to be a disappointment. We did however take the best graduates from the top universities and they were paid a starting salary to match this level of capability. Our employer invested in its people. |
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15th May 2019, 15:17 | #75 |
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Our policy was the same but because of their qualifications Plessey paid them as much or more than a young apprentice trained Toolmaker with an ONC or T4 qualification who was ambitious and wanting to move up into the design office or production engineering. They improved rapidly they knew what they were about and understood more. The graduates on the same or mostly more were trainees, didn't understand things but thought they knew it all. I had to spend more time with them holding their hands sorting out mistakes where the lower qualified performed better. I can tell you these apprentice trained lads mostly ran rings round them and did knock the cockiness out of some of them.
In the end it enabled me to argue for higher pay so they all started at the same level and then got promotion on merit. Plessey were very good at encouraging people. I was a fast tracker and came from a technical apprentice start but by the time I was 24 had my own team of design and detail draftsmen but that didn't prejudice me. I wanted them all to succeed and do a good job. Less hassle for me. I was sent one graduate who had a History Degree. Why he was employed as an engineer only HR would know. He couldn't get into his head why a metal could cut another metal or the theory of a cam. Even when I asked why did a knife cut butter, it's harder he says the concept of metal cutting metal was beyond him. I managed to persuade those above to move him so he went to production engineering. Lasted a week and they had had enough. So he went to work for my Dad who said he was the best management trainee he had ever had. The last I heard of him we were both short listed to go out to Brazil to manage a factory out there. He got the job because of his management expertise. He became a round peg in a round hole, which was great. I had another nothing like as bad but 90% of his work had to be corrected. Two engineering degrees and every year he went on more night classes. Just couldn't put it all into practice and after I moved to GEC who did I come across but Allan. First thing he said on meeting was can we do lunch, and at lunch apologised for being so bad at his job and giving me so much grief. Now he was working in production control and found his vocation. I had so many with that piece of paper that gave them a confidence way above their ability.. In the end my eexperience saw 80% of the apprentice trained lads go further than the graduates. Last edited by RobSun; 15th May 2019 at 15:25.. |
15th May 2019, 15:25 | #76 |
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Our policy was the same but because of their qualifications Plessey paid them as much or more than a young apprentice trained Toolmaker with an ONC or T4 qualification who was ambitious and wanting to move up into the design office or production engineering. They improved rapidly they knew what they were about and understood more. The graduates on the same of mostly more were trainees, didn't understand things but thought they knew it all. I had to spend more time with them holding their hands sorta v out mistakes where the lower qualified performed better. I can tell you these apprentice trained lads mostly ran rings round them and did knock the cockiness out off some of them.
In the end it enabled me to argue for higher pay so they all started at the same level and then promotion on merit. Please were very good at encouraging people. I was a fast tracker and came from a technical apprentice start but by the time I was 24 had my own team of design and detail draftsmen but that didn't prejudice me. I wanted them all to succeed and do a good job. Less hassle for me. I was sent one graduate who had a History Degree. Why he was employed as an engineer only HR would know. He couldn't get into his head why a metal could cut another metal or the theory of a cam. Even when I asked why did a knife cut butter, it's harder he says the concept of metal cutting metal was beyond him. I managed to persuade those above to move him so he went to production engineering. Lasted a week and they had had enough. So he went to work for my Dad who said he was the best management trainee he had ever had. The last I heard of him we were both short listed to go out to Brazil to manage a factory out there. He got the job because of his management expertise. He became a round peg in a round hole, which was great. I had another nothing like as bad but 90% of his work had to be corrected. Two engineering degrees and every year he went on more night classes. Just couldn't put it all into practice and after I moved to GEC who did I come across but Allan. First thing he said on meeting was can we do lunch, and at lunch apologised for being so bad at his job and giving me so much grief. Now he was working in production control and found his vocation. I had so many with that price of paper that gave them a confidence way above their ability.. In the end my eexperience saw 80% of the apprentice trained lads go further than the graduates. |
17th May 2019, 18:33 | #77 | |
I really should get out more.......
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18th May 2019, 22:16 | #78 | |
This is my second home
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I find your post really strange - you compare trained technicians with a History graduate who for some reason was put in a technical environment. To become a professional engineer, a person needs to have degree or higher level analytical capability and understanding of the chosen field - for engineering, this must include physics and maths and well as the specialist chosen field e.g. electronics, mechanical engineering etc. This needs to be supplemented with a minimum of 5 years performing graduate level engineering functions such as design. These are the minimum qualifications required to become a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institute of Engineers and Technologists. The roles you are describing are technician roles in an engineering environment. They are not the roles of a professional engineer. Technician roles are extremely important in the engineering environment, but they are quite different from the role of a professional engineer. This of course is the problem in the UK in that the engineering profession is continuously being devalued by non-engineers describing themselves as engineers. Example being a mechanic calling himself an automotive engineer. The same also devalues technician roles in that no one wants to describe themselves as a technician believing it to be a lower status role - which it is not. In Germany, a person has to possess qualifications along similar lines to those described in the first paragraph above in order to call himself an engineer - that is why engineering has the status that it does in Germany. The use of the term engineer is regulated. I was employed at Plessey between 1981 and 1986. My first project upon joining Plessey after graduation was the design of a transmitter for a 19.2Kb/s modem using advanced digital signal processing techniques for use by the military. My second project, the design of the timing extraction signal processing algorithms for the receiver section of the same modem. This was at a time when the rest of the world was designing 1.2 Kbit/s modems. So I was one of the well paid graduates that you describe. A non-graduate apprentice of the type you describe would have taken around 15-25 years to develop the signal processing knowledge in a hands-on manner that would be required to design these items. I acquired it from world standard lecturers/researchers whilst studying at Kings College for my BSc and Imperial College for my Masters topped up with a 4-week period studying the specifics of modulation encoding/decoding strategies under a world recognised expert in the field - a professor at Loughborough university. I was based at the Plessey Telecomms R&D centre called Taplow Court - a manor overlooking the Thames in Berkshire. The above is the reason that companies like BT and Jaguar send their apprentices on degree course. It does not matter whether you attain relevant degree level education first followed by the hands-on experience, or apprenticeship followed by a degree. The only way to become a true professional engineer is to have both the theoretical knowledge/analytical capability and the experience. p.s. next week, an "engineer" from a local "Environmental Engineering & Management" firm is coming to empty my septic tank! Last edited by MSS; 19th May 2019 at 09:29.. |
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19th May 2019, 06:02 | #79 | |
Been absent for a while…
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Hopefully Longbridge can be saved along with the remaining jobs there.
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................................................. 'Marmite' Possibly one of the most famous 75 tourers produced! left the production line as the last of only Three Rover 75 tourers produced in Trophy Yellow. 48 hours later Longbridge closed. The last sold ordered 75 Tourer. Paid for by the Phoenix Four and handed over by John Towers to the Warwickshire Northampton Air ambulance service as a Rapid Response vehicle Last edited by sworks; 19th May 2019 at 06:12.. |
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19th May 2019, 10:26 | #80 |
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I hope that they don't send a spotty graduate engineer around, who hasn't got a practical clue, and blow the thing up.
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