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Last chance to book for Skills Summit 2018

A new event to highlight the skills challenge facing the industry takes place this week. 

The inaugural ACE Skills Summit: Future-proofing consultancy and engineering, takes place on Wednesday 6 June 2018 at the Marriott Grosvenor Square, London and will focus on the key skills issues facing the industry. These include how to attract and retain the next generation, the challenge of filling the skills gap and how best to deal with the loss of knowledge as more experienced generations retire.

Key speakers from Ramboll, Engineering UK and the Royal Academy of Engineering will explore these issues in the morning session of the event, while the afternoon will be split into three separate work-streams for emerging leaders, apprentices and HR professionals. The afternoon also includes practical sessions dedicated to improving commercial and business skills, as well as knowledge of the wider industry.

Taking place during the Year of Engineering, the ACE Skills Summit will explore ongoing concerns around the skills gap in the UK construction sector. Estimates project that there will be a demand for 265,000 skilled employees in the sector, including 186,000 engineers until 2024. The situation is further exacerbated by the ongoing uncertainty around Brexit and its potential impact on the free movement of Europeans which has traditionally helped to meet this demand.

The event will also look at strategies to attract and retain millennials who will soon make up 50% of the global workforce. The new ways of working that need to be developed to appeal to a generation of highly-educated, digitally-native, socially-conscious and confident self-starters will be examined at the summit.

ACE has collaborated with a range of stakeholders in putting together the summit's agenda, including ACE’s Progress Network and HR Taskforce, the Technician Apprenticeship Consortium and a number of CEOs and HR professionals who have helped to devise an engaging and informative agenda to explore the issues in-depth.

The event is aimed at a number of audiences: 

  • CEOs who want to gain insight on the major skills issues facing their industry;
  • HR professionals who would like to learn more about the innovative ways of recruiting and retaining the next generation; and
  • Engineers, technicians or apprentices who want to improve their business and commercial awareness, knowledge and leadership skills.

The skills summit will provide a unique opportunity for the sector to come together to address the skills issues it faces and will collectively identify solutions to future-proof consultancy and engineering and ensure it remains both an attractive career choice and an industry which continues to deliver to its fullest potential.

At the summit, ACE will also reveal the results of its innovative reverse mentoring project where senior leaders and senior executives (mentees) learn about current trends and behaviours from junior staff (mentors) who in return gain valuable insight into the knowledge and experience of senior executives. 

The project, the first cross-company pilot in the infrastructure industry, included 11 mentor pairings from Arcadis, BWB, Mott MacDonald, Max Fordham, Peter Brett, Tony Gee and WSP. All delegates at the skills summit will receive a complimentary copy of the reverse mentoring report which will highlight recommendations for any company interested in launching their own reverse mentoring scheme.       

Click here to book places at the ACE Skills Summit.

If you would like to contact Andy Walker about this, or any other story, please email awalker@infrastructure-intelligence.com.