It is well established that one of the biggest barriers to growth across our enabling technologies sectors is skills and this is reflected across the wider manufacturing and engineering landscape. Action is needed now to ensure that identified solutions receive the priority – and funding – they deserve and reflect the importance of manufacturing to Scotland’s people and economy.

Critical to this process is data and a collective group of bodies – led by Scottish Engineering – have joined forces to gather detailed evidence of the future skills volume required so we can identify gaps that could bring lost opportunity for Scotland.

We need your help to survey the current and future needs of industry in key roles, asking you to state or forecast:

The current number of headcounts in the organisation for key given roles
The forecast demand for additional and replacement headcount for that given role each year for four years
Your current plan to train these additions or replacement headcounts
Finally, the peak capacity that your organisation has now to train that given role each year
The survey is based on the same standard job descriptions/codes used in the sector’s annual pay benchmarking survey and will enable us to make reliable comparative conclusions from the data received.

We cannot overestimate the importance of our sectors engagement with this process. While we have well established specific skills needs, it is clear that our community would benefit from wider investment in manufacturing and engineering skills. This is why this unique opportunity to collaborate across multiple adjacent sectors is so critical.

Thanks for your help to provide this essential information.

Guidance for completion