“One of the problems we have in this country at the moment is the skills shortage; it is a massive problem within the compressed air industry. People have neglected training over the years because it’s not been a priority for them for financial reasons or for some other reason, and very few young people today seem want to go into engineering. They see IT as the future – and to a certain extend it is – but  manufacturing is also the future.

 

“We’ll still need to buy products – food, white goods, cars and so on, and all these industries use compressors. Yoghurt pots, salad bags, glass, plastics, almost everything we use on a day-to-day basis, has had a compressor somewhere in its manufacture. So there will always be a requirement for compressed air.

 

“Manufacturing in the UK is currently on a massive growth spurt. There’s a lot of inward investment, yet still we cannot attract people. At Maziak, for example, we’re now employing qualified electricians and re-training them in the compressed air market. This is no bad thing, of course, because compressors are getting a lot more electronic in their controls and so to have an electrical background is quite a strength.”

 

James believes that, Maziak, like many other compressor companies, can offer a very good career path of which an apprenticeship scheme is one option. Maziak currently has 16 engineers, six of whom are apprentices who James says have served their time and earned their papers. He believes them to be top quality and is keen to encourage others to benefit from apprenticeship schemes.

 

James explains a little about how his role on the Board of BCAS has enabled him to become more involved in training issues: “Within BCAS there are 172 member companies of which 87 are distributors yet, rightly or wrongly, it’s always been perceived that BCAS has been run for manufacturers and not for distributors. So two years ago myself and Mark Scott, MD of Compressed Air Solutions in Lutterworth, were voted onto the BCAS board to represent distribution in the UK.

“I visited several distributors to canvass what they believed BCAS stood for and what they expected from it. I found that many members just wanted to pay their fees and have the badge. They didn’t really want anything else or perceive that anything else was of any benefit to them which is a shame as I think it can offer a lot more, for example in terms of in terms of training and technical knowledge. Mark and I identified two key issues on which we would focus: Membership criteria and training/apprenticeship programmes. Mark is now running the membership criteria working group and I am running the training working group.

“Over the past 18 months, I’ve been looking at various training packages. Training organisations get funding based around the number of candidates they have, and training bodies such as City & Guilds will only write, and therefore underwrite, apprenticeship programmes if the number and volume of potential candidates is sufficient to warrant the work they will need to do to put the course in place.

 

“I’ve been speaking to our local training college and indirectly to City & Guilds about building an apprenticeship programme devoted to compressed air. This would be the same as you have for plumbers and for heating engineers. It would be a set programme so no matter where companies are based they can go to their local training college and explain that they have an engineer who wants to do a compressed air apprenticeship and they’ll find that there’s a specific City & Guilds course. They will know what modules it entails and how long it’s going to take. That’s my goal.

 

“I’m well on the way in terms of working out what modules there should be, but not so far forward in terms of getting City & Guilds to qualify the training course. I’m having great difficulty finding out from distributor members and from non-distributor members, how many apprentices there are in our industry which is crucial in moving forward. I want City & Guilds to say ‘Fine you’ve got potentially 300 apprentices coming through every year – yes, we’re interested’.

 

“Not only is this going to be a City & Guilds course, it’s going to be a BCAS course and BCAS will recognise it as a top qualification for a compressor engineer.”

James is very excited about the scheme and about training in general. He says: “Maziak has just been given an award for our commitment to training. We’ve spent a lot of money and that’s not just on product training, it’s on health and safety, customer care, mentoring, train-the-trainer, and so on. It’s a commitment to our staff and they appreciate it – not because they see it as an asset to take somewhere else, but because they can see that we are committed to them.

“My message to any employer would be ‘Don’t be afraid to invest in training’.”