Comment: Cracking the code for engineering collaboration

I want you to ask yourself some questions. How do you think we will secure and maintain a strong workforce of skilled engineers to meet net zero? How can we support young people on their STEM journey? And, how can we collaborate in a way that has real impact?

These are some of the questions the engineering community has been grappling with for some time.

There are many organisations across the UK inspiring the next generation of engineers through delivering brilliant outreach activities. But, the sector is calling for a more joined-up approach to ensure those efforts make a real difference

The Tomorrow’s Engineers Code is a community of almost 250 organisations working towards common goals to increase the diversity and number of young people entering engineering careers. Signatories and Supporters commit to four pledges – inspiring connection, driving inclusion, showcasing engineering and improving impact. This commitment works towards addressing key issues faced in the engineering community, such as closing the skills gap and ensuring the UK has the skilled engineers and technicians it needs to thrive and to meet net zero, increasing the diversity in the workforce (not just in gender but also race, education and background) and demystifying engineering for young people. We urgently need a more representative workforce. It is disappointing to see such a low level of underrepresented groups in engineering, for example, only 16.5% of those working in engineering roles are women, according to EngineeringUK’s Women in engineering report.

Back in November 2021, we held the first annual review of The Tomorrow’s Engineers Code which asked Signatories about their work towards the four pledges. We wanted to discover how being a member of The Code has helped organisations to improve their engagement activities, how they are working towards each of the pledges and what further support they would like us to provide to improve The Code’s impact.

So, what did this tell us? It became very clear that there was an overwhelming need to understand what engineering outreach is being provided by other signatories across the community and enabling them to link up with each other.

What are we doing with this insight? We are continuing to curate information and guidance from across the community on the Tomorrow’s Engineers website, to share what works so all engineering engagement activity is targeted and high impact. These resources support best practice but we know our community values face-to-face interactions, so in July 2022 we hosted Tomorrow’s Engineers Live, a conference and networking event, which brought the engineering community together to share best practice and build connections. We also looked at what more we could do to help facilitate collaboration across the sector. The result is Code Connect, a new virtual matching systems that allows members of The Code to share, connect and collaborate to produce impactful engineering outreach. I remember those first conversations about what would become Code Connect, it's amazing to see that organisations are using it to make those connections and start to collaborate.

Along the journey of searching for what drives members of The Code, discovering how they implement the four pledges into their outreach work, and learning what they want from us, I am excited that we have been able to launch a new resource to inspire collaboration and help organisations increase their impact by working together. The Code team and I will be checking in on the collaborations that result and it will be interesting to see the areas they work together in. As more collaborations take place between different organisations, we will be able to understand which regions in the UK receive the most engineering engagement for young people, as well as the types of organisations that collaborate, and the type of activity they collaborate on. This shared insight can then shape where we focus our attentions in the future.

This will be instrumental in helping us to pick out where young people are missing out. It will become clear which regions need to be targeted more to ensure young people are exposed to the engineering careers available to them, and to secure the diverse and representative workforce of the future we need.

If you want to collaborate to drive impact in the engineering outreach space, I’d urge you to join The Tomorrow’s Engineers Code and join a community that is working together to inspire the engineering professionals of tomorrow.

Melanie Washington is Director of Engagement Projects at EngineeringUK