Coventry Small Business receives accolade presented by HRH The Prince of Wales

A Coventry business has proved that it is not just big companies that have a role to play in training and inspiring young people into technical careers. At the Annual Industrial Cadet Awards in London, an event attended by HRH The Prince of Wales, M-TEC Engineering Projects was lauded for its approach, receiving the Judges recognition as “Outstanding SME Employer” for their work in taking a steady stream of young people from local schools and giving them insights into technical design and the careers that it can lead to.

M-TEC Engineering Projects is a Design & Engineering Consultancy & offers a wide range of Programme, Engineering & Design services to the automotive and engineering sectors, developing components and systems from concept through to product realisation. The students aged between 15 and 18 from local schools are undertaking work experience at the Industrial Cadets Gold Award level with M-TEC. Typically the students are with M-TEC for around seven days during which they learn how to use a design package, are set a project design brief, scope out a project with support of the M-TEC team, and design a ‘product’ on design software, making a 3d print of their final design.

Industrial Cadets is an accreditation for young peoples’ experiences of employers in science, technology, engineering and maths industries, ensuring that those experiences have maximum value in inspiring young people into careers in those disciplines.

M-TEC is acutely aware of the shortage of skilled Engineering and CAD designers. The number of people available for this highly skilled work has been very limited for some years. Engaging with young people through Industrial Cadets is a great opportunity to get young people into engineering environment from a young age whilst still at school.

M-TEC Managing Director Steve Hanson says, “Although we are a relatively small company in the automotive sector, we feel that we have a responsibility to educate younger people about the opportunities within our sector, whether that be Engineering & Design related or within the sector more widely. Major manufacturers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan offer Industrial Cadet work experience, but it cannot just be left to the big companies. If all businesses encourage such activity, we will start to attract the next generation of engineers to ensure that UK industry continues to develop over the longer term. We are particularly keen to try to attract more women into our sector, and we feel if we can spark that interest in Design & Engineering in girls at an early age that this will open up a whole new source of skills for our sector in the long term.”

M-TEC received their award from HRH The Prince of Wales at the event which took place on the 7^th March at IET London: Savoy Place.

The idea for the Industrial Cadet accreditation was originally seeded in a conversation about providing effective experiences of work and industry between HRH The Prince of Wales and executives of the Tata Group in 2010. Since that time His Royal Highness has taken a keen interest in the establishment of Industrial Cadets as a national accreditation and its recent rapid expansion.

Julie Feest, CEO of the charity EDT which co-ordinates Industrial Cadets says,

“M-TEC has realised that if every company large and small made a contribution to inspiring young people into science, technology and engineering careers, the skills gaps in these industries would be rapidly closed. Companies only need to engage at a scale proportionate to their size. M-TEC has found that taking students in small numbers at a time, but with great regularity, avoids the activity becoming a burden, but has a significant impact on raising the awareness of the careers companies likes M-TEC can offer. Other SME companies can look at what M-TEC does for these young people and realise that it is a contribution that they could make too.”

For more information on the event, along with a full list of winners please visit the Industrial Cadets website here.