P U B L I S H E R ’ S D E S K THEY’RE ENGINEERS SCOTTY, BUT NOT AS WE KNEW THEM The new 2041 Auckland City is great in theory, but the investment in training needs to start right now. http://tinyurl.com/jvayms4 www.engineeringnews.co.nz 3 I’ll start with this: A new Auckland City by 2041. Now this point I will return to, but in the mean time, there’s also a new breed of engineer out there: the ‘YouTube Engineer’. While your business may face the struggles, as with many in the current engineering workshop environment, of finding the right staff, trained up and ready for work, perhaps it might be better to target potential employees on YouTube rather than traditional avenues such as Seek? Obviously, that would be a move that would be somewhat akin to using a slightly less quality grade of steel for a project (and heaven forbid, who would do that?), nevertheless many of the skills used on a daily nature within an engineering workshop environment are readily available to be learnt, nicely packaged in concise YouTube tutorial videos. And the YouTube engineer is being empowered with voice, now able to again show their skills with the relaunch of the British cult television programme ‘Robot Wars’, which pits designer, engineer and manufacturer up against the same, each wielding their own interpretation of a ‘killer’ robot. Andrew Robertson, executive producer of the newly relaunched show says the internet has empowered people and the level of engineering that today goes into the robots was not available to those who aired on the show over a decade ago. These new design engineers have the toys at their fingertips too. “The young guys are incredible. The world is changed and they’re making stuff with 3D printers that for them is just standard.” Robot Wars was first screened in 1998, by the now infamous Jeremy Clarkson, former presenter of another cult classic, Top Gear. Robot engineers aside, there is an engineer of a another kind that’s fast popping up and available to a sector that is short on people power: The prisoner kind. No, it’s not a class to build the tools needed to make a quick departure from containment, but more about freeing a prisoner with options when they legitimately leave the jailhouse. “Across New Zealand prisons we have a large number of offenders gaining skills and qualifications in engineering for employment on release,” says Carolyn Murgatroyd, Corrections communications adviser. On page 9 you will find a story on a new training programme at Christchurch Men’s Prison. Engineering training is also provided in Otago Corrections and prisons in the North Island. “Our challenge is to get in front of prospective employers and encourage them to consider these well trained applicants and help offenders to get a second chance in a business which will give them stable employment and long term opportunities,” she says. And of course, the industry is making great haste to try and balance a current gender and racial disproportion within varietal engineering industries. That brings me back to the 2041 future city of Auckland. Where is the shortfall of infrastructure engineers going to come from? Of mechanical engineers? As building and construction of futuristic living ramps up, the flow through effect will also filter right down to traditional engineering workshops... it’s not a terribly difficult mathematical equation: if you have to build ‘X’ number houses you need ‘X’ number of builders. And if you want to build X houses with X builders then you are going to have to find an Xtremely (sic) large number of trained engineers in multiple fields. And that comes down to investment now, within the industry training sector, from local and Governmental bodies. The target of 400,000 commercially feasible houses by 2041, part of a Unitary Plan proposed by an independent hearings panel, is going to place immense pressure on current and progressive infrastructure. Sure, there’s a new type of internet engineer out there. And, sure, there’s a soon-to-be released type of engineer (locked up) in there. But these won’t scratch the surface of a sector that is already struggling to attract qualified and skilled labour. Enter, stage door left, overseas labour. Making the kind of big bucks that a deficit dictates. Some sending wages earned home and out of the Kiwi economy; others likely to buy homes here and then bring their families too. Perhaps just that may place new pressures on a 2041 housing market of the future, and a cycle is born. If the work is being created, I would like to see investment now, here, for Kiwis, at training level to ensure we are ready to fully capitalise and prosper from within. The answer might just be to toss it all in the air for the moment, ignore the problem and instead sit back and forget about it for now, and watch some robots do battle. But if that is done, I just hope it all doesn’t all fall upon heads because this time it ain’t no acorn, Chicken Little. Greg Robertson Publisher, greg@hayleymedia.com
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