Opinion: How to fix our shortage of engineers

The report is titled Crisis and Opportunity for a good reason. Firstly, we needed to ensure that the message of the critical nature of the shortage was loud and clear, but then we had to provide the solutions. Government is bombarded with issues every day, but when you give them the solutions, you are providing them with an opportunity to do something.

Like other industries, we see the ramping up of skilled migration as a necessary short-term solution. We are just so far behind we can’t solve the shortage by training alone. It will typically take an apprentice around five years to become qualified — that is too late, and we will see more maintenance organisations close their hangar doors if we do nothing else in the meantime. However, migration is only part of the solution here. The migrating engineer then must convert their licence to our system.

Unfortunately, our system attempts to reinvent them into a diploma candidate fresh out of school. While that’s great for a 20-something-year-old, it’s quite ridiculous for an engineers with decades to experience to complete a course on ‘Effective Leadership for Maintenance’. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) needs regulations in place to recognise foreign engineers or to at least minimise their transfer of licence requirements. We must have a more pragmatic approach to recognising these foreign licences and, at the same time, work on improving the system to make sure we supply our own engineers in the future.

The report focuses on longer-term solutions for this reason as well, such as reverting to the option to issue an engineering licence with an exclusion. Why does someone who only works on simple aircraft need to do pressurisation (Exclusion 16), or someone who only works on small helicopters needs to do air conditioning (Exclusion 15)? When they do want to step up, then they study those modules to get those exclusions removed. Having a modular testing system could also make the study less onerous. When you do a subject, then do the test, don’t make them wait, for example, around 18 months to complete all subjects and then do a test. It’s a lot to retain, especially when learning new things and doing the practical.

The training pathways could not be more complicated, and I, for one, have given up trying to understand them. Thankfully our report’s author, Sheridan Austin, knows a thing or two in this area and has provided advice on better education from CASA and our training organisations as to what the pathways are. This is not just for apprentices but also for the maintenance organisation who are also struggling to understand the ins and outs of the training. This convoluted training, we believe, is also adding to the reluctance of young men and women to leap into this career.

Promoting this career to our young, especially women, is also a critical element of ensuring supply into the future. This is a team effort, and we can’t sit back and just expect the government to do the work for us. However, coordination is key, and I noticed that in the USA, they ran a program called Youth Access to American Jobs in Aviation Task Force, a joint FAA and industry task force looking at ways to promote the industry better. The task Force made 21 recommendations which included recommendations of inserting training into the high school curriculum, as we have proposed in our report. We would love to see a similar task force stand up here to learn from the US example but also find local solutions as well.

The RAAA report provides achievable solutions, of which many can be implemented in a short timeframe, CASA and the government have been very receptive to our initial approaches to work with them collaboratively for the sake of the industry. Time will tell, though, but I am always hopeful that common sense eventually prevails.