Communicate to accumulate

The failure of Network Rail to complete major construction projects on schedule, resulting in New Year chaos on the railways, will doubtless be subjected to close scrutiny by the regulator.

But whatever the conclusion of that post-mortem, the news headlines of early January will remain in people's memory. Network Rail told frustrated politicians and commuters that the difficulty it faced was due to 'a lack of specialist [skilled] engineers'.

The government also showed recently that it was short of an engineer or two. Its review of the need for additional nuclear capacity failed to analyse the skills requirements. It took the Royal Society of Chemistry to point out that there were not enough nuclear engineers in the UK, or possibly globally, to deliver such a programme.

Speaking the language of finance, the Return on Investment (ROI) model showed a positive return for investment in nuclear capacity, but assumed the market for engineering skills was 'efficient' and therefore omitted that factor from its model drivers. In the language of economics, 'efficient' means essentially that if demand for resources — in this case, engineers — is required, then supply will develop at a market competitive price.