Last week, Trish and I spent a few days in London helping look after our most recent grandchild. The TV was permanently tuned to CBeebies during the day – and we soon found ourselves subconsciously humming along to a catchy tune often playing in the background.

Know what it was called?  “Go Engineering”.  Brilliant, a regular programme on CBeebies that explains how things work. One programme explained how the steering operates on a car, all aimed at a largely pre-school audience. (check out the song by Nina and Neurons in the link below).

CBeebies features many popular programmes and characters involving trains, tractors, cars and fire engines as well as creative 'using-your-hands' programmes like Mister Maker. The encouragment is there to feed the enquiring minds of young children.

However later on, in an era when ‘being famous’, a pop star, or footballer, seems to dominate the career ambitions of many young people, enticing them to look seriously at engineering, in all its facets, is an uphill struggle.

So, well done BBC (sounds like Points of View) for highlighting the need for one million more engineers by 2020 in an hour long phone-in hosted by Nicky Campbell on Radio Five Live last Wednesday morning (Your Call 4 Feb at 9.00am still on I-Player).

It all comes down to perceptions when you hear the word ‘engineering’. One caller said that all it prompted was fears of yet another delayed rail journey “. . . over-running engineering works”.

In previous generations, engineers were the celebrities of their age. In more recent times, the Mecanno sets, Airfix kits, Lego and the like have been replaced by X-Box and Playstations.

And yet, young people of every era are interested in making things, using their hands and knowing how stuff works.

One teacher on the phone-in recounted how they involve engineering graduates in the classroom to talk about their speciality. “If I ask the class who wants to be an engineer, one or two hands go up, that’s all.

“But if I say ‘how would you like to design a racing car, a big tractor, a spaceship, or a fast train’ – then lots of hands shoot up”.

So there is growing awareness of the opportunities offered by this whole wide world of engineering. We now have to find the trigger-points that turn casual interest into a desire to be involved.

Our ‘job description’ of land-based engineering is not the most explanatory or obvious explanation of what we do or what we offer. But focus on the kit itself, the technology and the benefits to mankind – and we have a great story to tell.

Check out the Go Engineering song