Engineering: turning ideas into reality - Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 66 - 79)

MONDAY 7 JULY 2008

CLIVE SMITH, OBE, ROBERT SKELTON AND MICHAEL GRAVE

  Q66  Chairman: May I welcome our second panel this afternoon, Clive Smith OBE, the Skills Development Director Nuclear of Cogent, also representing the National Skills Academy for Nuclear, Robert Skelton, the Vice President of the Institution of Nuclear Engineers, and Michael Grave, the Vice President of the British Nuclear Energy Society. Welcome to you all and thank you very much for coming into the earlier session. May I start with you, Clive, please. There are reported United Kingdom skill shortages in nuclear engineering. Are they simply a reflection of this general shortage of engineering skills, or are they very much specifically to nuclear because we just have not done nuclear for a long time with serious intent?

  Clive Smith: There are some very specific hot spots: reactor physicists, for example, have risen on the Immigration Border Agency shortage category to allow immigration in that area; there are reported shortages in the Health and Safety Executive with nuclear inspectors—perhaps not surprisingly, as you need very experienced chaps, so they would be very much at the latter end of the age spectrum—and some other very particular areas. It is a general shortage and I think it goes back to what you were discussing in the last session, that there is a general shortage of engineers and scientists. Indeed, what employers generally tell us is that what they want is good engineers and scientists, which we can then "nuclearise" so that they can work in the context of nuclear. Many of the skills across nuclear, or oil and gas, or any other industry, are transferable engineering and science skills.

  Q67  Chairman: Do you share that, Michael?

  Michael Grave: I certainly do. Not with a BNES hat on, my company works in all the major industries such as oil and gas, conventional power, nuclear, and we are basically looking for graduate chemical engineers, mechanical engineers and project managers, which is another area that is particularly difficult to get hold of. These graduate trainees, when they come into the company, could end up in any industry at the end of the day and I strongly support what Clive said that it is important to get people with the right sort of engineering good general background qualifications at the beginning and then we can give them career development training into other areas.

  Q68  Chairman: Robert, do you share that view?

  Robert Skelton: Yes, I think that is correct. One of the problems that the nuclear industry has got is that it was the industry to go into in the 1950s and 1960; it was the growth industry, so of course the age profile is significantly higher than perhaps most others. I know from the Institution of Nuclear Engineers, our age profile is significantly weighted towards the older age group, although in fact it quite surprised me to see that applies to professional engineers in general, it is not just nuclear engineers.

  Q69  Chairman: Can I raise this issue with you, when I was a young chap and the first wave of nuclear power stations were being built and nuclear engineering was very lively in our universities and in colleges at technician level, it was all basically owned by the Government. It was under one roof and since then it has been fragmented significantly to a point at which it is very much now all within the private sector, within different small pieces. If you take, for instance, the decision about Westinghouse being sold off, is not the fragmentation of the industry causing the skills problems as well?

  Robert Skelton: It makes the industry less attractive. We are beginning to see the corner turned on this one, we are seeing organisations like the NDA setting up graduate training programmes. Certainly a lot of graduates, I am also from the University of Cambridge and the chemical engineering departments, and the graduates like to go into companies where they can see good training and a good future. To train people in general engineering with perhaps specialities in nuclear engineering is really the way to go, because I think it is more attractive to both the companies and the students. I, personally, think fragmentation is a very big problem. When I joined the industry, it was either the Atomic Energy Authority, BNFL or CEGB and that was basically it.

  Q70  Graham Stringer: Has not the fragmentation and privatisation meant that there are higher salaries at the top end for engineers?

  Robert Skelton: At the top end, yes, but I am not certain just how far down that applies. I do not honestly know. People like to see a training programme, someone who can give them an integrated training programme and that is why our students in chemical engineering would far rather go into companies like the oil companies, Proctor & Gamble, the big companies like that are much more attractive to them generally than the smaller companies.

  Q71  Chairman: But, Clive, not so long ago, the BNFL would have offered exactly the sorts of career path and opportunities that Robert is talking about and as far as training, it had a reputation that was very high indeed in terms of training and progression. Do you think that the National Nuclear Laboratory is going to fill that gap?

  Clive Smith: It might, in part. We were talking about the fragmentation being part of the picture. The other part of the picture was the image of the industry; it was very much a nuclear industry in decline. Everything was working towards shut-down, towards decommissioning and, whilst there are some pretty exciting challenges in decommissioning, the overall perception is knocking things down. For a young graduate, newly-qualified technician or craftsman, knocking something down does not seem quite as bright and exciting as building something new and operating a new plant and getting to grips with running a new plant. The image of the industry as well was something that was not attractive for this limited field of engineers and scientists to come in. The formation of the National Nuclear Laboratory, the potential for new build and all of these initiatives—I think you heard at the last session, that student numbers are increasing, it is pretty crude and rough data, but the number of students on the Birmingham MSc is the most this year that they have ever had; there are universities opening up nuclear undergraduate courses. So it is becoming more exciting and more people are now starting to come in, and starting up the NNL will assist in that perception.

  Q72  Chairman: Michael, just briefly, is the NNL a good idea?

  Michael Grave: Yes, it is a good idea. I am doing some work with the National Nuclear Laboratory[2] at the moment, in terms of the European Framework programmes that you mentioned, in the field of decommissioning. I rather agree with one of the previous speakers at the previous session who was concerned about whether they will get involved in fundamental forward thinking research or not. The bit I deal with at the moment is very much associated with decommissioning.


  Q73  Dr Blackman-Woods: Given that the shortage in nuclear engineering skills is an international problem, do you think the United Kingdom will be able to attract people with the necessary skills, even if we load points into our points system to attract nuclear engineers here? Is that really going to happen?

  Robert Skelton: So much depends on career prospects and the end of the stop-go policy, which is another thing that has put people off. We have had this stop-go policy for so long. The last major project I was involved in was Sizewell B. It was going to be one of six reactors and everybody was extremely enthusiastic; we were going to have a new design and were going to build six of them for once. We were then going to build four of them but only one was actually built. We have got to show some continuity to attract anybody, both from overseas or from the United Kingdom.

  Clive Smith: I want to back up what Robert just said. All the messages coming out are for a bright, attractive and vibrant industry, and that should assist in that attraction.

  Michael Grave: You must not forget about the excitement of the part of the industry; the thing that excites companies; the level that my company works from is the possibility of making a profit. You put your business plan together and then you can recruit the people. The energy industry in general at the moment is so buoyant, it is quite easy to recruit new people into the industry because there is a big future seen there. You have got two sorts of problems: not only is there a world situation about the nuclear industry, but there is a big world resurgence in energy in general at the moment and there are other energy industries competing with the nuclear industry for resources as well. I have just been to the German Nuclear Society annual conference in Hamburg a few weeks ago, and almost the identical stories were being told over there that we have got here. It is a pretty worldwide problem, as you say.

  Q74  Dr Blackman-Woods: Ideally, putting the current shortages aside and looking at what we would really like, what would the skills landscape look like in order to ensure that we can move forward in the United Kingdom to new build intelligently? What would we need that we have not got, or what would you like to see?

  Clive Smith: A much larger pool of engineers and scientists in the United Kingdom from which all our industries can fish from. That is a big joining-up problem across Government, not just for the support to make different energy solutions, but across the universities and the school sectors, making sure that were getting a constant message to have that pull-through of people.

  Michael Grave: It is not only getting the engineers, it is getting the school children motivated right and getting a joined-up path from school children through to university through post-graduates and PhDs and continuous development right to the end of their careers. And not only at the engineering professional levels, it is important to have the technicians and supporting people with the skills and the trades. Underpinning all that, it is important that we need scientists as well, because engineers basically start off studying science in most cases.

  Q75  Dr Blackman-Woods: Is the capability of the supply chain necessary to deliver new nuclear power stations important as well?

  Michael Grave: The supply chain capability will appear, in our experience, if there is the market to do it; engineering companies will come along and do it.

  Robert Skelton: A guaranteed market for more than one reactor, that is the problem. If we can see, as they have in France, a guarantee that Britain is going to implement a nuclear power programme then, not just the education establishment, but everybody will see that it is worthwhile tooling up to do it.

  Michael Grave: There is global risk, for example the company that owns the company that I work for is building five nuclear power stations at the moment in Korea and we are invited "if you fancy a career in Korea, to go and work in Korea", so there is a draw all over the world for engineers. We have a lot of Koreans over here as well.

  Clive Smith: That would be very much a global supply chain.

  Michael Grave: It is a global issue.

  Q76  Mr Marsden: I would like to go down a bit on this skills shortages issue, but if I can take you back to something that was just said in response to the Chairman to Roberta: you talked about the industry having a bright, attractive, vibrant future, and the Chairman referred to his salad days when it was the done thing to go into this area. That was the time when we were all moonstruck too and we know what happened to some elements of that. The serious point I want to make is, you are talking about having this grand design connecting between schools, colleges and universities, do you not still have a major image and cultural obstacle to overcome? The written evidence that we had from the Department about the actual diversity in the nuclear industry at the moment says, "The nuclear industry is 82% male, and overwhelmingly white, with females mostly in stereotypical roles". First of all, is that a fair description at the moment, and if it is a fair description and you think it is something you need to overcome, how are you going to overcome it?

  Clive Smith: I thought the percentage of white males was higher than that in the nuclear industry, so you have been quite generous. We have discussed the history of the industry and the fact that it went into decline. There was not a large recruitment; many of the people who were recruited into the industry in the 1960s and 1970s into engineering jobs, particularly the nuclear industry, were white and male. There is also a geographical factor; the diversity around the remote sites where many of the nuclear power station staff come from is a generally white population; it is not reflective of the multicultural city mix and so we will not ever get it towards that much greater mix, but there is the ability to increase the gender and ethnic mix.

  Robert Skelton: There is an historic factor here. When I joined the industry most of us who did joined the Atomic Energy Authority or BFNL. No matter at what sort of level you were working, you needed a fairly high level of security clearance. Even contractors, way into the 1980s, had to be United Kingdom citizens. It was not just for the Ministry of Defence projects or BFNL projects in those days. This automatically of course tends to bias you certainly towards the white, if not necessarily male.

  Q77  Mr Marsden: I hope you are not going to suggest that women would be less secure than men.

  Robert Skelton: No, but it must be the age profile of the industry. In my undergraduate days, there probably was not a single woman in engineering. Even now, at Cambridge, we have only got about 20%.

  Q78  Mr Marsden: Is this a problem?

  Michael Grave: I see it as something else. We have an organisation in the British Nuclear Energy Society which we call the Young Generation Network[3] and, interestingly, against all the trends, since the enthusiasm for decommissioning and nuclear and even keeping the existing stations operational, our membership has changed from about 1,000 people with 10% of people who we call young—and I will not tell you why it is under the age of 37, but there is a reason for that—now 40% of our membership is of the YGN age and we have about 1500 or 1,600, and 50% of the chairmen of the YGN in the last six years have been women and very good at that, in fact.


  Q79  Mr Marsden: Can we move to the issue of competition. We have heard from UCLAN that they believe there is going to be competition between decommissioning and new build for talent in this sector. Is that inevitable; is it a good thing or a bad thing?

  Clive Smith: It is inevitable, and if you take the military programmes also, there will be competition with those programmes, it is an inevitable fact that the industry has got to get over and ensure that salaries are attractive enough to retain people within the legacy part of the programmes, as well as the new build.


2   Note from the witness: "I am doing some work with Nexia Solutions Ltd, which will become the NNL" Back

3   Note from the witness: "Associated with the European Nuclear Society also" Back


 
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