Bridging the skills gap

The paper asks: ‘What does our industry need from Government to recruit new entrants, upskill the existing workforce and change the diversity of the workforce’?

It looks, for example, at how to incentivise, communicate, build skills, start young, and promote diversity, and was written by Jeremy Towler, senior manager, energy & smart technologies, BSRIA Worldwide Market Intelligence.

On the diversity issue, Julia Evans, CE, BSRIA, said: "We have had to go through many generations to get more female engineers on board and the status quo does not look set to change any time soon without some external impetus. Government needs to help industry to find ways to be more inclusive in all demographic aspects, to attract more diversity into our industry and to raise the status of engineers – if necessary, through some form of incentivisation.”