Introducing school children to the excitement of engineering

School kids
Let’s play at being engineers — Ant Wilson stimulates enthusiasm in young children by letting them dress up.
If pupils at school do not know about building-services engineering, how can they express an interest in joining the profession? ANT WILSON shares his experiences in taking the initiative and making them aware of the excitement of engineering.While many people express concern about the shortage of people and skills in the building-services industry, one still senses that there is more talk than action. Committees and working parties abound, discussing action plans and identifying needs. Meanwhile in Hertfordshire a dedicated group of people from a large firm of consulting engineers is doing much more than just talk. For many years, Ant Wilson of Faber Maunsell, which has a large office in St Albans, and a team of about 30 ambassadors, has been working with schools in the area to promote and stimulate interest in engineering. This work is not a series of one-off operations but, rather, a continuous process of sowing and nurturing seeds so that interest can develop and blossom. ‘It’s about making children at school feel good about engineering,’ says Ant Wilson. ‘We don’t just talk at school assemblies, We get children of all ages involved in the day-to-day experience of engineering by taking with us into schools hard hats, high-visibility jackets and goggles. The younger ones love it.’ The process starts young and continues right through to sponsoring university students and placements. Faber Maunsell has an ambassador link with most secondary private and state schools in St. Albans and some further afield in Herts. Beds and North London. They are all cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau. Some pupils from schools in the area also obtain their work experience with Faber Maunsell when they are 14 to 15 years old. Some return for further experience, and Ant Wilson particularly recalls a pupil from Hitchin Grammar School, some 15 miles from St Albans, following up a week’s work experience at age 15 with a further four week when he was 16. ‘That lad,’ says Ant Wilson, was originally planning to be a linguist. He now has finished reading engineering with French at Sheffield University. He was sponsored by Faber Maunsell for four years, with guaranteed summer experience and now has a first-class degree in mechanical engineering with French. The work experience that Faber Mansell gives to school pupils is practical and realistic. For his first week, the pupil from Hitchin Grammar School worked on thermal modelling, assessing heat gains and losses using a computer program. The theory of U-values was explained, and he experimented with various façades and glazing materials, with fixed window sizes. That successful week was followed by a further four weeks examining the effects of climate change — in particular, rising temperatures. He considered the UKCIP (UK Climate Impacts Programme) scenarios for 2020, 2050 and 2080. Including a gap year before he started university, that person has now had links with Faber Maunsell for over seven years. ‘The work-experience programme introduces Faber Maunsell to some really promising people,’ says Ant Wilson, ‘and they build up an interest in the company before they go to university, which is very beneficial to our future staffing needs.’ The entire practice sponsors 40 students, including structural engineering, and recruited around 120 graduates this year. The excitement of hands-on experience is taken out to schools. As part of a series of rapid-response challenges, six staff work with school pupils and new graduates on projects such as fuel cells, drainage relief and fire engineering. Why does Ant Wilson put so much effort and commitment into promoting engineering in schools? ‘I want them to hear at least once that engineering is a good profession and discipline,’ he explains. He also reveals that he did not embark on a building-services career until he had been at university for two years. He went to university to read structural engineering in a school of architecture. That course had a building-services content, and he switched courses after two years. Out in the schools, the approach is to make building-services engineering relevant. ‘You can always bring up a project that people know of,’ he says. ‘In our area the Xscape entertainment destination in Milton Keynes is an excellent project to discuss. It has an indoor ski slop, and the production of artificial snow is fascinating.’ Other aids to generating interest include computer modelling, with a ‘fly through’ a building and discussing sustainable development — which is a big sell to young people. One issue that Ant Wilson and his team try to address is school pupils drifting away from subjects that will enable them to pursue a career in engineering. ‘Pupils taking single science at GCSE cannot study separate sciences in the sixth form, so they are lost to engineering,’ explains Ant Wilson, ‘so we have to get our message to them well before they make their GCSE choices. The sixth form is too late.’ While he has long found working with schools to be a rewarding experience, Ant Wilson also encounters frustration. ‘It really bugs me that the most popular A level in one school was psychology, with 60 students, and only about three studying maths in a large sixth form.’ Faber Maunsell has had links with schools for many years, which were developed into a formal framework seven years ago as part of a policy of becoming a world-class company. However, Ant Wilson stresses that a company does not have to be large to work with schools. He himself started his involvement as a school governor with a primary school. He concludes, ‘To improve the quality of engineers in building services, we have to get into the schools and catch people young. The investment put in by Faber Maunsell certainly pays off — but more investment is needed from the rest of industry.’
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