Nick Pascoe, chief executive officer of Controlled Power Technologies (CPT), a UK-based engineering company, has spoken of the difficulties faced in recruiting professional engineers in the UK.
Speaking at the SMMT’s International Automotive Summit today, Pascoe described the challenges faced by engineering companies such as his looking for highly qualified engineers.
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“Our challenge for the UK is not just in finding talent, but in finding engineers with the right skills right now or face the consequence of supplier R&D activity potentially being lost to non-UK based businesses,” says Pascoe. “In its latest report the Institution of Mechanical Engineers polled 1,000 manufacturers and three-quarters of the companies said they were recruiting and almost two-thirds said they were struggling to recruit suitable chartered or incorporated engineers.”
Pascoe describes the situation of his own company, CPT. “As a smaller company CPT has the additional challenge of competing with much larger companies. That said we do have the advantage of being nimble, offering exciting work at the cutting edge of automotive powertrain development and the attraction of virtually every employee becoming a shareholder. Our engineers and the work they do are recognised as a significant part of the value of our company. ”
Pascoe says that CPT has been busily recruiting engineers in response to increased demand for its 12, 24 and 48 volt modular hybrid solutions and also to increase its resources following the successful recent sale of the company’s electric supercharger business to Valeo. The sale of that business and its production ready technology included ten engineers that worked on the project.
