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Should engineers have a voice within government?03 April 2009 This writer believes it should, and the recent 140-page long report - Engineering: Turning Ideas into Reality - appears to come to a similar conclusion. The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills (IUSS) Committee has finally published the results of its yearlong inquiry into the state of the UK engineering sector, and at last appears to recognise the fundamental differences between engineering and science.
Engineering advice and scientific advice offer different things, the report asserts, and it urges recognition of this in the policy-making process. In certain key policy areas, government simply doesn’t have sufficient in-house engineering expertise to act as an ‘intelligent customer’, and engineering advice is frequently not sought early enough during policy formulation.
While most of us suspected as much, the discovery that engineering advice had been sadly lacking in the formulation of policies as important and diverse as eco-towns, renewable energy and large IT projects, nonetheless “shocked” the report’s authors. Making a distinction between scientists and engineers, the report states:
“Science and engineering are disciplines that differ fundamentally, particularly in their goals: scientists set out to find out how things work whereas engineers typically are more interested in whether they can turn ideas into reality. In a policy situation the distinction is obvious. For example, in setting carbon emissions targets one might turn to scientists to gain an understanding of what impact carbon emissions have on the climate and to engineers to identify what is possible in terms of practical actions. Only with both strands of advice is it possible to set meaningful targets and develop a strategy for meeting them.”
In his evidence to the Committee, former president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Professor Lord Broers expressed agreement that there should be a government Chief Engineer. And he wasn’t shy about teasing the Committee panel either. Asked if he would settle for a Chief Scientific and Engineering Adviser, he quipped that he would settle for a Chief Engineering and Scientific Adviser.
Bob Dover, former chairman and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, when asked by the Committee if the government would benefit from having a Chief Engineer, believed that the post was “much more important” than a Chief Scientist. Professor Dame Wendy Hall was equally emphatic about the appointment of a Chief Engineering Adviser, noting that just as Chief Scientific Advisers set best practice for science policy in a department, you need the engineering expertise to set best practice for engineering policy.
In its own submission, the Royal Academy of Engineering pointed out that there is growing support for the appointment of a Chief Engineer, distinct from the Government Chief Scientist. Engineers, it said, have particular skill in the deployment of resources to meet national goals and measures, the management of risk and the assessment of technological solutions to problems like climate change and security of energy supply - all of which are essential to good policy making. Such an appointment would also go a substantial way to ensure that engineering is appropriately represented in government.
All very laudable, but where are the government’s engineering advisers, and is there sufficient will within government to create such posts?
A problem that we face in the UK is creating a large enough engineering skills base in the first place, nurturing it and ensuring that it remains within these shores. There is potential engineering talent in our schools, but the fundamentals it has to have at its fingertips - maths, physics and chemistry - are not taught with anywhere near the rigour and methodology of past decades.
Last month’s broadside by Ofqual, which deemed GCSE science standards as “clearly a cause for concern”, does rather add weight to this argument. The danger is that we are simply not stretching the most talented pupils with ‘tick-box’ examination papers and we possibly risk losing a generation of engineers to other professions.
Quite apart from this, the engineering profession has a serious image problem here in the UK. And for professionals held in such low esteem, the temptation to move to places where their skills are more highly appreciated and rewarded is great indeed.
The IUSS Committee, when assessing the UK’s engineering skills needs, said that it is important that the government should not ‘navel gaze’ but keep one eye on the competition. Monitoring the extent to which the activities of other nation states are likely to compete for the indigenous skills base is particularly important in the current economic climate.
The controversial $787billion US economic stimulus package, for example, has set aside a significant portion of this budget to create opportunities for engineers to work on a wide range of projects. The Committee concedes that these opportunities are unlikely to appeal only to the US’s domestic engineering population.
Let the Committee have the last word:
“We are convinced that the considerable strength of the UK’s engineering base makes it both this nation’s responsibility and in its economic interest to play a major part, through our engineering base, in solving global problems such as climate change, food and water supply, energy security and economic instability. The recent economic crisis has presented the government with a once-in-generation opportunity to restructure the economy by building on the existing substantial strengths of UK engineering.”
Quite so.
Simon Rowley
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