Greybeards versus ‘Playstationers’ - Bruce Kendall to speak on the instrumentation skills shortage

Bruce Kendall, Manager - Business Implementation, RMIT, will be speaking at the upcoming ACI Connect conference in Melbourne in April. I recently caught up with Bruce for an update on his keynote address.

Kendall has been in the instrumentation and control industry since 1975 and for a number of years he has worked in a business development role at RMIT University in the School of Engineering. In his present position, and in a previous role as a government industry sector manager, he has encouraged peak bodies such as IICA to advocate for the instrumentation and control industry.

In many parts of Australia, so-called ‘dual-trade’ electrical instrument training is in vogue, but Kendall asks the question: Does industry really know what it’s purchasing when supporting staff to undertake this training? There are many diploma- and graduate-level programs majoring in automation and mechatronics on offer; however, those majoring in instrumentation are virtually non-existent. Considerable importance is placed on PLC and DCS skills when recruiting engineers and technicians, but field instrumentation skills and knowledge rarely factor into position descriptions. And this is happening with the parallel event of older, experienced instrumentation personnel retiring.

Kendall’s presentation will explore the history and the status quo of education in the automation, control and instrumentation (ACI) industry and review what options are available to remedy the bleak ACI skills situation.

“We have a lot of experienced people in industry that are over 50 years old and are close to retiring, while there are younger, less experienced people coming into the industry who have been brought up in the ‘personal computer age’ and whose knowledge of process technology can be said to be wanting - they often don’t have the secondary and tertiary training skills necessary to support the industry,” said Kendall.

I asked Kendall about the continuing relevance of his article ‘Training quality and return on investment’, which we published in late 2011. The article questioned the quality of training being offered by many organisations as skills-gap training. “I don’t see the situation as having fundamentally changed,” he said. “Regardless of the qualification - trade certificate or diploma - the question is whether they want to really have the knowledge, or just the piece of paper.

“This applies not only to the student, but also to the employer - when the employer pays for skills training, then at the end, are they getting an employee with increased skills? Or are they really only paying for a certificate?”

According to Kendall, there is little in an electrician’s trade training that provides the knowledge necessary to work on instrumentation and yet this, plus an instrument short course, is what some organisations accept as the basis of the qualification the student will be awarded. However, the knowledge required to properly understand instrumentation cannot be instilled in this way.

“Trade certificates, particularly Cert III, should only be seen as a step along the way to becoming a process engineer or technician,” explained Kendall. “To really understand the technology and the science of instrumentation ... a trade certificate - even Cert IV - may not be enough, and they should really be educated to a diploma or advanced diploma level.”

But will employers want to pay more for someone with a diploma?

There are many questions around the future of process control and instrumentation skills training in Australia, and the needs of the companies that need people with those skills. Kendall’s experience and insight into this area of the technical training arena should make for an interesting keynote, and I hope to see you there at ACI Connect on 9 April to hear what Kendall has to say.