Women have engineering talent

Hundreds of nominations from across the UK for the nine categories have been shortlisted to leave 27 finalists battling it out in the prestigious Semta Skills Awards.

The winners will be revealed at an awards dinner on 10th February and, for the first time, each individual award category has at least one female engineer in the final.

Ann Watson, CEO of Semta, the not-for-profit organisation tasked with skilling engineering and manufacturing in the UK said: “Women are under-represented in the industry so it is fantastic to see so many nominated and making it to the final. We need 800,000 engineers by 2020 and we will only get there if more women are inspired to take engineering up as a career.

“Our finalists are role models who can send out the message loud and clear – women CAN be great British engineers.

“The Semta Skills Awards celebrate the very best of British engineering, recognising the achievements of talented people and inspiring businesses across the engineering and advanced manufacturing sector. It is right that we should shout loud and proud about what the finalists are doing to make Britain great.

“I would like to thank our sponsors for making the awards possible and wish all the finalists the very best of luck.”

The categories are:

• Apprentice of The Year sponsored by Atkins 
• Higher Apprentice of The Year sponsored by Rolls-Royce 
• Graduate of The Year sponsored by Marshall 
• Skills Champion of The Year sponsored by BAE Systems 
• Skills Innovation of The Year sponsored by Siemens 
• Training Partner of The Year sponsored by GetMyFirstJob 
• SME Investment in Skills sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover 
• Technician of the Year sponsored by EngTechNow 
• Diversity in Engineering award sponsored by MBDA and Wise 

The awards are judged by an expert industry led judging panel which will also select an overall winner of the Best of British Engineering Award from the winners of the categories above.

For a full list of finalists see below and for more details log on to www.semta.org.uk/skillsawards