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Further research developing the themes of the recent Sector Skills Agreement has highlighted the key issues facing building services engineering that need to be addressed to secure a successful future for our sector.
It will come as no surprise that the environment features high on the issues agenda. However, of particular concern to SummitSkills is that the sector's current exposure to, and skill competence within, environmental technologies are revealed to be limited. There is a clustering of technologies around regions, with some areas showing interest in certain renewables, but overall engagement is low. Combined heat and power is a prime example, with the few installations that are undertaken being inadequate to support the government's ambitions in this technology.
It appears that a high number of companies are waiting for market development before they invest precious time and money resource in growing their engineers' skills and branching out into renewable technologies. It can only be a matter of time before government stimulation of the market causes demand for environmental solutions to building services engineering applications to rocket, catching the sector on the hop. Its reluctance to engage in the renewables market will potentially damage the sector's profitability and encourage international competition to take advantage of the UK's skills deficit by entering the market. Productivity performance may well fall further behind foreign competition as our engineers become less skilled compared to their overseas counterparts.
It is also worrying that the current supply of training opportunities is inadequate both in quantity and in relation to formal qualification and measurement against national standards. Training in renewables remains largely the preserve of manufacturers. A sudden increase in the use of environmental technologies will create a heavy demand on training that the current supplier network will be unable to meet. London is particularly vulnerable in this respect with its high number of proposed building developments, including the Olympic village, that are likely to incorporate the highest specification environmental approach.
As a result of the research findings, SummitSkills will be working ever more closely with our partners and stakeholders over the coming months, and years, to create a balance of training supply and employer demand, which we believe must increase as the market develops, and ensure that the relevant technologies are offered wherever and whenever they are required.
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There is an obvious need for the industry to be more energy efficient and pay more attention to the ways in which energy is both used and wasted. Do you think we have the products on the market to meet our needs?
