THE BUSINESS OF ENGINEERING
Entrepeneur or engineer?
THIS week I have had the enoyable, but nonetheless challenging, task of putting together an industry careers brochure.
Where do you start? Who should it be pitched at? How do you sum up an industry that ranges from the technological wizardry of today's tractors and combines and precision farming, and also spans sectors such as forestry, gardencare, sportsgrounds, amenity, water management, environment and off-road transport?
We not only need to attract young technicians, but also those with any interest in robotics, GPS technology, science-based solutions and computer-based imaging who need to be aware of the exciting and wide-ranging opportunities that a career in our industry offers.
Picking up an issue of the long-defunct trade journal, Farm Implement and Machinery Review from 1965, published almost 50 years ago, I was fascinated to read a report of the conference of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers that year, in which the lead paper was, yes . . Career Opportunites for Professional Agricultural Engineers given by the then President Mr J H W Wilder.
In analysing the issues at the time, he said, “The most essential quality required to run a dealership is that the ‘boss’ should have business accumen”. He added “In the past, there has been a sharp-division between ‘bosses’ who were not technical, but who knew how to make money - and the professional engineers with technical knowledge who were not concerned with, what was considered to be, the “rather sordid question of making money”!
Of course, that was then, and this is now - but as ever it all does tend to come down to money.
WE now have M&S stores in petrol stations, Costa Coffee in bookshops, so why not KFC in garden machinery showrooms? I see that a dealership in Nottinghamshire is considering moving out to make way for a KFC franchise.
Why not combine the two? Admittedly the post-Saturday night party crowd might not be that interested in buying a Hayter Harrier at 2.00am, but at least their defences would be down - and add in a bottle or two of ‘Green Stripe’ to sweeten the deal . . .
Chris Biddle
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