OE13: Skills challenge - more needs to be done

More needs to be done to attract new talent into the industry, says Patrick Phelan, managing director of Aquaterra Energy, and a member of the Oil and Gas Industry Council.

The council, set up earlier this year, recently helped develop the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy, which includes an aim to bridge the skills gap and ensure continued future growth for the oil and gas industry.

The UK’s oil and gas industry supports 440,000 jobs across the UK. However, an estimated 34,000 more jobs are due to be created in the coming two years.

Phelan, who is attending this week's Offshore Europe, says: “Evidence of demand exceeding supply can be seen in a persistent, sizeable wage premium for people holding engineering degrees, and this premium has grown over the last 20 years.

“We need to attract a greater talent pool into engineering, with joined-up action to ensure we seize the opportunities at a national level.

“There are many things that businesses operating in our industry can do to help attract new talent: offering work experience; exhibiting at graduate recruitment fairs, gaining accreditation and actively engaging with engineering institutions; paying competitive salaries; developing close working relationships with university departments; considering non-engineers for commercial roles and math graduates for analytical roles; and delivering talks and presentations to secondary school staff and students.  

“This latter is particularly important when you consider that 87% of teachers believe that providing career guidance is part of their role. Eight out of 10 teachers base this guidance on their own knowledge and experience and around 20% of them think a career in engineering is undesirable.  

“The number of young people studying physics at GCSE level increased by 5% last year, but it still only accounted for 3% of all GCSEs taken. The number of A-level students choosing physics grew by 5% to a total of 34,509 and we need to sustain this increase, as a minimum, each year if we are to increase numbers studying [for] engineering degrees.

“There will be demand for around 87,000 graduate engineers each year in the UK for the next 10 years. Worryingly, only about 46,000 people qualify each year.”