With impressive growth figures and world-leading innovation, the UK aerospace sector has a lot to offer engineers
At a time when many UK industries are still finding their place on the international stage, the £31bn aerospace sector is a genuine British success story. In the last seven years, productivity in the industry has grown by 19 per cent, compared with just three per cent in the rest of the economy. Now, aerospace companies are looking to recruit talented engineers to sustain that growth.
The latest figures from ADS Group, the trade organisation that represents aerospace companies, paint an encouraging picture of the future for any engineers hoping to start a career in the sector. Today, the UK aerospace industry is the second biggest in the world. The industry is growing, with UK aerospace output increasing by 39 per cent since 2011 and annual turnover reaching nearly £32bn. It achieved exports of nearly £28bn in 2016 and is looking to build on success in overseas markets to help drive further sales.
A large part of that success is down to international demand for products in Europe and North America. Around 90 per cent of final demand in aerospace comes from exports, and strong order books means nearly two thirds of UK aerospace companies are expecting growth greater than 10 per cent in the coming years. The current global civil aerospace backlog is worth up to £220bn and there is currently nine years work in hand for the UK.
Opportunities for talented engineers are vast as the industry looks to build on recent strong figures.
With an ageing workforce and a growing skills gap, the industry is ramping up its recruitment efforts. A spokesperson for Airbus, one of the largest recruiters in the sector, said that the company is currently focusing on hiring network and IT systems engineers, software engineers, digital developers, electronics engineers and data scientists. Rival Boeing is also increasing its recruitment efforts in the sector. It is planning to double its workforce again in the coming years, having grown from 1,000 people in 2011.
Boeing currently employs 2,000 people in the UK, hiring, on average, a new employee every day. Its spending with the UK supply chain is estimated to be around £1.8bn with 12,700 additional jobs supported in the process. Conrad Ball, who leads Boeing enterprise engineering workforce training and development efforts, said technical skills in areas such as aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, structural engineering are all in demand.
“It is increasingly important that all are well prepared as systems thinkers,” said Ball. “There’s an emphasis on continuity from innovation to design to development, production, and support as a single conceptual thread. Each engineer needs a really clear understanding of how the decisions that they make contribute to the complete life cycle value of products and services. Along those lines, familiarity with model-based systems engineering is becoming more and more important for engineers in all skill areas.”
Alongside this, Ball said there are exciting opportunities in the areas of artificial intelligence, autonomy and analytics. “And many may not realise how important areas such as software engineering and computer programming are for aerospace,” he added. “The performance and safety of our complex products and production systems rely on world-class coders, analysts, and modellers.”
The UK aerospace industry sector directly employs 120,000 people in the UK and supports a further 118,000 jobs indirectly. The industry, however, faces huge technical challenges that require skilled workers to solve, such as a move towards lowering CO2 emissions and noise,
and incorporating technologies such as augmented reality systems.
Engineers from parallel industries such as automotive can also transfer their expertise across. “We share our focus on technical excellence with a lot of industries,” said Ball. “What differentiates Boeing is the complexity of the systems combined with the profound impact that our commercial, defence, space products and services have on billions of people around the world. We seek people to join our team who are ready to take on that responsibility and challenge.”
“The pace of change in the industry is so fast especially in terms of industrialising and revolutionising production, that we are increasingly asked to recruit from other industries, primarily automotive,” said Ben Birch, department manager of aerospace at engineering recruitment firm, Matchtech. “Automotive is an industry that has already gone through that transition, and its engineers have been using the relevant toolsets for years.
As the sector gets serious about automation, engineers from the fast-moving consumer goods, oil and gas, and automotive sectors will be on the wishlist of aerospace employers who need people to help take them on that ‘lessons-learned’ journey.”
Despite UK aerospace boasting strong growth, there are some big challenges ahead and aerospace recruiters know they can’t afford to be complacent. Both big companies and the supply chain must meet demand for more advanced and efficient aircraft at competitive prices. They also have to address the growing competition from overseas rivals. Alongside this, uncertainties associated with the UK’s exit from the European Union have increased pressure for strong order books.
Birch said potential recruits must understand the aerospace business they will be joining will be going through change. This is exciting, as it offers opportunities for engineers to grow and learn, to shoulder responsibilities, to innovate and to ultimately see their hard work impact on the success of the business. But it is also not without its challenges. “They will have to work at pace, spin many plates and deal with pressure from OEMs to deliver,” said Birch.
“If engineers are up for the challenge, the aerospace industry will reward them with significant opportunities to innovate and transform the future of aerospace.”
Take this with a pinch of salt. Activity is almost entirely on a bitza (bits of this, bits of that) sub-contractor, subsidiary or joint-venture basis. Numerous types of aircraft are almost wholly designed and built by aircraft businesses in Brazil, the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, China, Russia, India, Poland and the skies only know where else. On that basis, the UK is tail-end Charlie. Only two types of aircraft, the ex-de Havilland Hawk trainer and the Britten-Norman Islander and two AugustaWestland helicopter types have been wholly designed and are built in Britain. The great fingers and everything else crossed hope for regaining the lead the UK had in the Fifties Golden Age of British aerospace technology leadership is the Reaction Engines Sabre synergetic air-breathing rocket engine and Sabre-powered hypersonic air/space vehicles.
And whose to blame? Every irrationalising, nationalising and compromising Govt for the last 60 years.
” ….regaining the lead the UK had in the Fifties”
I am so old, I do recall the recruitment folk coming to Uni in 1961/2 (following which I spent two summer vacs at Bristol in the Brab hanger and Bristol Siddeleys’) actually saying this and that there was a future in that industry which would lead ‘per ardua ad astra’. What happened?
It really is amazing just how much hype politicians of all stripes (but are those from the Right, worse) make about offering money to buy solutions that should never have been needed in the first place. But I must be careful: Grumpy Old Engineer will be accusing me of bias and being unpatriotic if I carry on!
Fully concur with Ed; I’m one of those aerospace engineers very well trained in the UK then seduced by opportunities in the US because the Thatcher govt. refused to support industry in the eighties. I was successful, but would much rather have found success in the UK. We’re innovators, a creative race; I don’t see our subcontractor role as “a genuine British success story”.
My Uni friend and contemporary, (I’ll call him Hike Murst!) -who was a jig& tool expert- went to Seattle in 1968. [The first plane he ever saw was the one that flew him there] he found that his ability to ‘think around an issue’ made him shine very quickly in that large plane-maker which starts all the numbers of its planes with a ‘7’. He told of recognising that the middle-ranking Engineers who really knew the score were from Germany, UK, Holland, and for the majority certainly NOT US citizens nor educated.
He went on to Rochester NY to join (as an Engineer) a well known camera /film manufacturer and producer (the name starts with ‘K’). [His knowledge of cameras at that time was taking pictures of his children! ] He quickly shone again, albeit in an entirely different field, because he could think it through! He said that once again, he recognised that the Engineers and technologists who really moved and shook were from Agfa, Fuji, Perutz, Ilford… ie NOT locally developed. I believe fellow bloggers will be aware of my own efforts in the field(s) of synthetic fibres and textiles. I could say without contradiction that those who really developed that field in the US were from Germany, UK, Japan, Italy, certainly NOT US trained and educated. That is three pivotal industries. What did we UK educated Engineers do to deserve such a group of wasters as our leaders and apparent betters?
One can only concur fully with all of the above. Our political masters have led us down the road to ruin, despite the fact that the engineering and aerospace/defence giants must have been among the real leaders “in the shadows”. Perhaps if we had any politicians that actually had any spine, and were prepared to deny the big financiers that really run the country, we might get a better shot at it . . .
Ok so the aerospace business is worth all these billions and they are looking to recruit so all the Mr negative contributers above try to make it sound rubbish.
I deal with Rolls,Royce, Airbus and probably the biggest employer with 10’s of 1000;s BAE Systems.
Embrace this news and hang on the shirt tails of Beoing and Airbus actually making planes abroad and bang the big drum of WE ARE SUCCESSFUL in the sector not score cheap political points from between 30 and 60 year ago.
Look on the bright side Corbyn would have nationalised it then it would have been %^*&£$.