Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400
- 414)
WEDNESDAY 21 MAY 2008
MR CHRIS
ALLAN, MS
LEE HOPLEY
AND MR
IAIN COUCHER
Q400 Mr Cawsey: That is where the
Government could help?
Ms Hopley: Yes. There is work
going on. There is potentially a role for organisations like ours
to perhaps help to a greater extent.
Q401 Mr Cawsey: Given that it is
all global competition now anyway, is the UK a good place to attract
R&D compared to other countries around the world, or is there
more than we need to do, and what are the differences?
Mr Allam: It is a good place.
We have a long history of fantastic innovation, particularly in
the defence and aerospace industry, we are very good at it, and
that remain the case. There are other parts of the world that
spend a lot more money in terms of research. The US just spend
more money. What we need to do is really target our research money.
We are not going to run our economy in the same scale that they
are, but that does not mean that we cannot compete. What we need
to be is clever about we do and probably more focused and joined
up in terms of our intent and the outcome of it, and that is why
I think a more national strategy would be useful.
Mr Coucher: We get the benefits
in the rail industry from global competition, because a lot of
the equipment and technology that we buy and put onto our railways
comes from global suppliers. All of our signalling systems come
from European suppliers, from Far East suppliers, from Japan,
and likewise, our trains, were it is a very competitive market
and innovation is driven on a global basis and we get the benefit
of that. From our particular part of research and development,
I would tend to agree with Lee, a lot of our focus on innovation
is how to do the same thing much, much quicker, so it is innovation
in process delivery, and we are looking at the speed by which
we do work on the railways, how quickly we replace a set of points,
and within a couple of years we will be the world leaders in that—we
will be doing it in eight hours, and nobody else in the world
can do it in less than 12—so we drive leadership in that
area. Equally, the use of materials. Modular builds: for example,
you will start to see footbridges and even road bridges made out
of plastic, for want of a better word, glass reinforced fibre,
because we can install those in a matter of hours and just lift
them in. So you will start to see innovation driven by market
forces, driven by the need for us to change what we do and how
we do it, and I think we are pretty good at that and I think many
people will learn from what we do.
Chairman: Last but by no means list,
Dr Harris.
Q402 Dr Harris: I will come back
to the national strategy that you have just mentioned in a moment.
I want to ask you what you make of the fact that the discipline
of engineering has, we count, 36 bodies running it from the TB
and the 36 engineering institutions, the Chartered Engineers and
the Royal Academy and the Engineering Council. What is it like,
big employers working with such a wide range of different organisations,
each with a locus in this area? Does that create problems?
Mr Allam: Is it a big problem?
No, probably not. It is difficult to get a single voice out of
that. There are, to me, too many. Each one is very well-intentioned,
they are very professional bodies, all very good, but there is
no-one that really represents engineering and, therefore, no one
of them has a particular strength, as it were. They are all quite
small with a very small voice.
Q403 Dr Harris: Do you both share
that view?
Mr Coucher: It may well be 30
odd, but we deal with three or four of them. There are many parts
of them which do not apply to us, but we deal and work very closely
with people like the Institute of Civil Engineers, the Mechanical
Engineers, Railway Signal Engineers and that is it.
Q404 Dr Harris: Would it be useful
to have a one-stop shop or at least some streamlining and, if
so, what can industry do to press for change? Otherwise things
will stay the same because they have each got their own boards
and their own habits?
Mr Coucher: From our perspective
I do not think it would make any difference. I am quite happy
with the arrangements. It does not cause us a problem.
Q405 Chairman: Are they irrelevant?
Mr Coucher: No, from our perspective
getting people through a chartered engineer status is important,
it professionalizes the industry, it does give a certain level
of professionalism and standard, and when you start to get into
the work that we do, we do want our people to be specialists now
in certain engineering disciplines and I think that the institutes
that are there at the moment do bring up the profession in certain
areas; and I know they are keen to work much more closely together
in some of the common engineering principles, but I want my signalling
engineers to be experts in signalling and not generalists who
know a little bit about electrical creation and wattage, which
will be of no interest to our people. So I am quite happy where
it is, because we only deal with three or four of the big ones
and, while there are a plethora of smaller ones, they do not have
a significant impact on what we are doing.
Q406 Dr Harris: We would like all
your engineers to be good at signalling. I cannot disagree with
that. Mr Allam, you have mentioned this issue of the National
Engineering Strategy. We have got little time left, but can you
specify the main reasons why—if you just list them—you
think we need that? What are the main deficits that that would
be aiming to meet?
Mr Allam: Fundamentally, I think
we have got a gap between what we see as being the outputs of
engineering and the real focus in terms of what drives the economy
and the input side, where we are training and developing our people
and where we are focusing them. I think that spans such a breadth
that we need to be focusing on both sides of that: what is the
output we want and, therefore, what is the input we want going
in terms of the training and development? The second part of that,
I think, is to get this focus on engineering as a professional
institution, and that does come back to professional bodies. I
would like to see a more professional engineering profession within
the country whereby there is a real drive to become accredited
in engineering. At the moment, in a lot of areas, there really
is not a drive to do that; you can quite happily carry on without
being accredited and be a good engineer, but I think we need to
lift that standard, and that is why co-ordinating the bodies,
I think, would be useful.
Q407 Dr Harris: Where are you up
to with this strategy? Is it something you want to do or is it
in the process?
Mr Allam: What we are looking
to do is to try and encourage the Government to support that.
We do not see that as being necessarily an industry-led strategy.
We are recommending here that you think about: would it be a good
idea to join that together? We do not see that as something industry
can do on its own.
Q408 Dr Harris: If our report that
we are going to do meets your requirements—and you do not
have to pay us for this anyway, we will do it anyway—would
you give it some backing?
Mr Allam: Yes.
Q409 Dr Harris: To help us with this,
to use the words you put in your evidence, again very briefly,
because it is a big question I am going to ask you, how can we
"encourage" the brightest and best people to seek careers
in engineering as opposed to politics?
Mr Allam: To keep the answer brief,
it is fundamentally about encouraging people about the benefits
that engineering brings to society and the benefits they will
get from entering the career of engineering. It is that key focus
area around the school time where people decide what their career
is going to be where we see the weak link at the moment in terms
of attracting people into engineering. We have got a lot of good
further education courses that people can go into, but a lot of
people are deciding not to. Fundamental beyond that is then around
ensuring that our engineering businesses are supported within
the country so that there is a strong blend of businesses that
people go into, that is both the small businesses and the big
ones as well that really drive the economy.
Q410 Dr Harris: Thank you. Admirably
brief and succinct and I appreciate that. Finally, there is this
intriguing line in your description of what we need to do, which
is to say we need to alter our approach to public and private
research funding to ensure that research outcomes generate greater
competitiveness. Discuss briefly again.
Mr Allam: What we are really talking
about there is getting the focus on research so it has an impact
on the end goal. Defence and aerospace is an easy one, effectively:
you can see the end goal in terms of supporting war fighters,
getting equipment to the front lines. It is really around getting
research focused on and actually supporting that end goal and
more the pull of research with maybe a little bit less of the
push of research. It is absolutely valid for some research to
be speculative, that is a good way of doing research, but we see
a more focused pull of research would be beneficial so that our
money is more targeted in terms of where it goes.
Q411 Dr Harris: You think the public
funding EPSRC, for example, should be directed differently, more
in collaboration with industry?
Mr Allam: Yes.
Q412 Dr Harris: Do they agree, or
do they say, "Yes, we have got it wrong. We are not industry
focused", or do they say, "We are doing that already,
thank you very much"?
Mr Allam: I think there are some
very good examples where that is happening. Some of the defence
technology centres are starting to do that. I cannot answer for
them, and therefore will not, but I think there are some good
examples, but that is something we can do more.
Q413 Dr Harris: I have finished my
questions. Is there anything either of you wanted to add to that?
Mr Coucher: I was only going to
reinforce what Chris said about the role of government and promoting
engineering as a worthwhile career. If you look at places like
France, Germany and Japan, where you have got a very large industrial
society, people understand automatically the value of engineering
contributing to society. In the service economy here in the UK,
people do not necessarily connect future careers in engineering
with the success of the country, but it is more in tune or more
obvious in the big industrial relations inside the rest of Europe.
So I think there is a role for the Government to be more supportive
of what we do, because at the end of the day the country needs
engineers to drive the UK economy forward.
Ms Hopley: Although I do not necessarily
think that this needs another strategy, I think Lord Sainsbury
had a lot of good stuff to say about the issues in schools with
careers advice and teaching and embedding STEM more into the curriculum.
I think that should be the basis of progress going forward really.
Q414 Chairman: I do not think there
has been a single session where that comment has not been made
over the last two or three years; that STEM subjects are absolutely
crucial to so many of these agendas. I would have loved here to
have talked to you about why Chris can send a piece of kit into
Afghanistan within three months and yet the level-crossing at
Poppleton still requires a little man to open it six times a day,
which means my train is always delayed into York. I leave that
hanging in the air.
Mr Coucher: I will happily write
to you. I was at Poppleton level-crossing about three weeks ago
talking about the very same subject.
Chairman: A note of accord at the end.
Could we thank you very much indeed, Lee Hopley, Iain Coucher
and Chris Allam for your evidence this morning.
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