Bill Drury is a former technical director at Control Techniques, a £300m-turnover engineering company. “I can’t remember a time when there hasn’t been a shortage of engineers,” he says.

His reaction is one common among engineers when asked about the sector’s notorious skills problem: it’s par for the course. The industry, for all its problem-solving expertise, has never cracked the skills supply/demand conundrum. 

The IET’s most recent survey on skills found that 47% of respondents reported a technical skills gap in their workforce. This is similar to a 2021 report stating that 49% of engineering businesses were experiencing difficulties in the skill-sets available to them when trying to recruit. This is a problem expected to worsen as the UK works towards its legally binding net zero goal. Although the demand for ‘green engineering’ roles has increased by more than half (55%) over the last five years, a report commissioned by EngineeringUK found that...