11 March 2009
Make skills a big deal
Okay. The World Skills event (colloquially the ‘skills olympics’), to be held in London one year ahead of the 2012 Games – also in the capital, of course – isn’t going to generate the news copy that its follow-on activity is. But if the engineering community isn’t going to make a big deal out of it, who is?
Our cover story highlights the current race to secure CNC Milling and Turning places for the UK team in Calgary, Canada later this year, and also points out that there is just one month left for those interested in representing the UK in 2011 to register.
Now I’ll apologise for not giving the event a higher profile sooner, but I have to say that there has been no apparent big push behind this event. Perhaps that’s why the UK’s representation at the World Skills in metalcutting engineering disciplines has been patchy and performance not overly inspiring. We have entered the CNC Turning event only twice in the last six events; CNC Milling has seen UK participation four times. But in that time only once has the UK won a ‘medallion for excellence’ – that’s behind bronze, but recognises a 500-point-or-more achievement.
As one past contestant reveals, to compete effectively requires both time and relevant facilities. And those relevant facilities include being able to practise on the actual machine tools that will be used for the 2011 event. That’s because producing a good piece is only part of the challenge; making it in the right time is the other element. Clearly, familiarity with the machine, control and even CAM system is essential.
For this year, in the case of machine tools, that means Haas; and plans for the CNC Milling hopefuls, at least, are that they will be able to train on these machines, because moves have been made to make sure they will.
Moving to the 2011 event, though, first we need entrants. The deadline is 9 April for entries and eligible individuals must be born after 1 January 1986. Visit www.worldskillsuk.org/competitions. Then we need committed employers who will release them to train, and also appropriate training facilities – but let’s get people entering as the first, essential step.
Machinery will be keeping a closer eye on developments as we lead up to 2011. We want to make a big deal out of UK engineering skills and see them well represented on the world stage, here in the UK. We hope that you do, too.
This article is taken from Machinery's March 2009 issue
Author
Andrew Allcock
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