ASHRAE Journal - December 2021 - 48

REFRIGERATION APPLICATIONS
COLUMN
Andy Pearson
Quality and Equality
BY ANDY PEARSON, PH.D., C.ENG., FELLOW ASHRAE
The fourth set of United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDGs) to go under
the spotlight in this short series are goals 4, 5 and 10: " quality education, " " gender
equality " and " reducing inequality. " These are admirable aims to have at a global
level-everyone wants " fairness " in the world-but in the context of engineering in
general and the refrigeration sector in particular they have a double-edged meaning.
A chronic shortage of skilled technicians exists in
the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump
(RAC&HP) markets at all levels, but there is also a
greater gender imbalance in RAC&HP than in other
engineering sectors. Putting these two shortages
together helps bring the path forward into clear view.
In engineering generally only 28% of graduates are
women (UNESCO Science Report 2021).
I suspect in RAC&HP the percentage is
much lower.
If we were able to continue recruiting
the same number of men into these
graduate engineer jobs but increase the
number of women graduates to match,
the labor pool would grow by 80%.
However, the current shortage is
only an early warning of what's to come. According to
the World Economic Forum (WEF) 40% of the workforce
will find that their core job skills change within the next
five years, and 50% of all employees will need to retrain
within the same time period. In addition, the average
age of the engineering workforce is now mid-50s
so there is going to be a substantial skills exodus and
decades of under-recruitment will leave an acute shortage
of experienced seniors to take over.
The UK's Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE)
conducted a global study of engineering capability,
examining 99 countries, and came to some surprising
conclusions. They identified six " engineering habits of
mind " : systems thinking; problem finding; visualizing;
improving; creative problem-solving; and adapting,
and then scored the countries in six categories of knowledge,
labor force, engineering industry, infrastructure,
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Charlie felt that it was time for some retraining.
digital infrastructure and safety standards. Although the
United States was number one for knowledge it was only
30th for availability of a suitable engineering workforce
and placed 82nd out of the 99 for gender imbalance in
engineering. In the measurement of safety standards,
one of the metrics used is fatal injuries per 100,000 in
engineering sectors and the USA was 91st out of the 91
countries for which data was available.
The WEF's " Future of Jobs Report "
published in 2020 lists the top ten
skills likely to be required in the labor
market by 2025. Five are classed as
" problem-solving, " including analytical
thinking and innovation; complex
problem-solving; critical thinking and
analysis; creativity, originality and initiative;
and reasoning, problem-solving and ideation.
Two others are overtly technical: technology use, monitoring
and control; and technology design and programming.
The congruence between RAE's six habits and the
WEF key skills is striking but not surprising.
The harsh reality is if you work for a company that is
not treating diversity, balance and safety in the workplace
as top priorities, there's a strong chance you will
need to find a new employer sooner rather than later.
Your current employer risks being squeezed out by the
skills shortage and failing to be seen as " the company
that everyone wants to work for " by prospective employees.
For some companies, no matter what they do, it may
be too little, too late but hopefully for others the UN's
equality SDGs will provide the wake up call they need.
Andy Pearson, Ph.D., C.Eng., is group managing director at Star Refrigeration in
Glasgow, UK.
https://www.ashrae.org/
ASHRAE Journal - December 2021

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