You’re worth it

It isn’t just a question of money. The industry is falling over itself to try and attract new recruits to the profession. And yet, worryingly, the Association of Consultants and Engineers reports on page 71 that three-quarters of firms questioned rank a skills shortage as their biggest concern.

While too few young people are choosing to enter the sector, by contrast the workload for potential recruits is growing. And as the nation begins to invest in the creation of a low carbon economy, as called for by Nicolas Stern in his report for the UK government (news, p8), it is only likely to get bigger. Stern concludes that the cost of investing in the right technologies would be trivial compared with the potential damage posed by climate change. He recommends using 1% of global GDP over the next 50 years to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions – this would make the low energy building expertise supplied by services engineers ever more essential.

As Paul Ross explains (opinion p19), clients are already demanding closer involvement from services engineers. This means that, in addition to the traditional duties of design and coordination, they are now expected to implement revised building regulations, ever more rigorous European directives, and planning requirements that meet both local authorities’ and the government’s drive for sustainability.

So, perhaps, the tide will soon turn and the profession will get the greater recognition it deserves from clients. More respect would be good. But clients need to offer something more tangible than that – they must also deliver fee levels that fairly reflect the important contribution of services engineers. It’s for their own good, too. Only then can they be assured that, faced with tricky environmental issues in future building projects, they will be able to find engineers of a sufficiently high calibre to help solve their problems.