As demand for engineers continues to rise, Severn Trent’s Chief Engineer Bob Stear explains how one good teacher changed the path of his life - and what needs to be done to encourage young people into this area of work.
Engineers are a unique breed. Creative and innovative, comfortable with complex data and an innate ability to solve some of life’s biggest problems. They thrive when faced with a challenge – it’s part and parcel of the job – and continuously search for ways to make the impossible, possible. It’s a demographic we can’t do without and the price of not encouraging more young people into engineering is too high, in my opinion. Am I biased? Well maybe. I’ve enjoyed a brilliant career as an engineer – it’s now the only job I could ever see myself doing. As Chief Engineer at Severn Trent, I have not only led on some ground-breaking innovations, but I see the incredible contribution talented engineers make to the business every day. And it’s being part of this exclusive faction that makes me want to encourage more young people into engineering, so they can experience that same satisfaction of seeing their ideas, shape the future. But that means encouraging more kids into STEM subjects at a very early age and ensuring they know the opportunities that exist in this field of study.
When I was a kid, like many growing up in the 1970s, I was the first of my family to go to university. Being brought up without much money in a small council house, there weren’t any professional role models in my family or among the people I knew to inspire me, so the chances of me going into higher education and carving out a solid career for myself, were small. Now, I’d love to say that I knew from a young age that I wanted to be an engineer – but I didn’t. I knew I was good at maths and science. My dad would say: ‘There’s Robert, could tell you the cubic capacity of a baked bean tin, but wouldn’t be able to open it.’ I had no idea that being good at these subjects could lead to a good job. So, growing up my ambition was to be a famous footballer, the next Kenny Dalglish! However, that changed due to one good teacher – Mr Gadd, who taught chemistry. He opened my mind to the why. Why should I be interested in pH, carbon or noble gases? For the first time I understood why bombs explode, why alcohol dissolves oil, why concrete is so strong. Basically, why you need maths and science to make sense of the world and do stuff. I ended up studying Civil Engineering at university, which gave me a strong all-round grounding. There were so many options available to me, opportunities I’d never even thought about. But for me, my epiphany came when I went to Nottingham Sewage Works in the 1990s. I was blown away by the fusion of physics, chemistry and biochemistry to take crude sewage right through to wonderful sparkling effluent. It was brilliant – I was hooked.
So there began my career in engineering, and the start of my ongoing progression within Severn Trent. Over the past 25 years, I’ve worked with some amazing individuals who have brought pioneering creations to life, and helped reinvent our processes, making changes that benefit not just the business, but also our customers and the environment – really inspirational stuff. And we continue to look to our engineers as we work towards becoming net zero by 2030. Our teams have collaborated with partners across the globe, bringing together the most innovative minds, to turn our ambitions into a reality. Among these is the creation of the world’s first carbon neutral wastewater treatment works. This exciting project is an engineer’s dream. It will be housed at our new £40m net zero hub in Staffordshire, where, for the first time, we will integrate the most promising technologies on one site, with the goal of reducing and removing CO2 – eradicating 34,000 tonnes of CO2(e) per year, which is equivalent to a person flying return between London and New York, 34,500 times. This hub is a real testament to the hard work of our engineers and wider team, who constantly strive to find ways of improving a process and using their extensive knowledge to tackle climate change.
And we are not alone in our ambitions. Demand for engineers is on the rise, due in part to the UK ramping up its focus on becoming net zero, with vacancies for ‘green engineering’ jobs up 55% over the last five years. These figures highlight the importance being placed on fighting climate change and the key role engineers play in sourcing solutions to tackling our greenhouse gases. But to ensure that we can continue on our environmental journey for years to come and advance our processes in the future, it’s imperative that we have access to a pool of engineering talent. At Severn Trent we regularly recruit for STEM roles but unless we do more to nurture talent at a young age and bring more young people from all backgrounds into engineering, we won’t be able to use terms such as ‘world-leading’ and ‘first of its kind’ when describing innovations here in the UK. If we can inspire young people in the classroom and evoke enthusiasm for engineering, allowing them to feel the excitement of developing their ideas, we can help ensure we have a continuous stream of innovative thinkers to boost research and development here in the UK, and remain at the forefront for innovation for decades to come.
I still think back to Mr Gadd and wonder what I would be doing now had that kindly, unassuming teacher not opened my mind to a world of adventure. Not being Kenny Dalglish, that’s for sure.
Click here to see Bob Steer provide more information on Severn Trent's net zero hub.