HETA campaign pays off with record number of girls into engineering

Amy Conroy (left) and Tegan Finnerty at HETA’s new Advanced Engineering Training Centre in Hull.

A LEADING engineering training provider has welcomed record numbers of young women onto its latest apprenticeship courses and is hoping they will help to attract more women into industry.

Iain Elliott, Chief Executive of Humberside Engineering Training Association (HETA), said the increase in the numbers of female apprentice engineers is a reward for the company’s efforts in getting a powerful message across in schools, colleges and at careers events.

He added that the recruitment campaign for young women and men has been boosted by the opening last month of HETA’s new £4.5 million Advanced Engineering Training Centre at Dansom Lane, Hull.

HETA welcomed 19 young women among the cohort of around 170 apprentices who began their courses last month at the sites in Hull, Stallingborough and Foxhills in Scunthorpe.

The Women into Manufacturing and Engineering (WiME) set up by Green Port Hull and various businesses initiative will bring together employers for careers events in Hull and Grimsby over the next two weekends to highlight opportunities available to women. HETA will also welcome around 80 employers to an open day at its new premises next week.

Iain said: “It starts with letting girls know when they are still at school and college that engineering is not male dominated and that they can make an important contribution. In our experience they make really good engineers.

“The female intake this year is a record for HETA. Last year we recruited five women but we have done a lot of work to attract girls into engineering. The latest figures show that our efforts could be paying off but it’s something we really have to work at, to convince a young girl that they can actually do engineering and be good at it.”

As part of HETA’s long-running campaign to promote engineering opportunities for women the company supported the Amy Johnson Festival in Hull in 2016. The decorated moth featuring a picture of Amy and the message “Amy Did It!” now hangs on the wall at the new headquarters.

Natalie Oliver, an electrical apprentice with Yorkshire Water, won the overall apprentice of the year accolade at HETA’s Hull awards last year. Rebecca Tacey, who progressed from her apprenticeship to a job with Total Lindsey Oil Refinery and a degree course at the University of Hull, has spoken at previous awards events to encourage more women to follow in her footsteps.

Iain said: “We talk to schools a lot. We go in and present at careers events and assemblies and it was the main reason for our involvement in the Amy Johnson Festival and our choice of moth to sponsor.

“We bring girls in for taster sessions so they can actually experience what we do. The challenge for us is to convince females and it helps that we have certainly had some outstanding female engineers in the past.

“It also helps that we have this nice, new, clean, modern centre. A safe working environment with better welfare facilities, better classrooms, better learning resources, everything.

“That will attract more people in – men and women. Our first parents evening this year went down a storm because it was parents who had seen the facility at Copenhagen Road and who were impressed with what we have here. There’s definitely a wow factor.”

Amy Conroy, who lives in Bridlington and followed in the footsteps of her brother, Jack, to join HETA, said: “I am really comfortable in an environment like this because everybody gets on together, there are more girls than before and we don’t feel outnumbered.

“I was a bit worried that people might think there are things girls can’t do but at HETA they are used to the idea of girls coming into engineering and they treat us exactly the same as the boys.”

Tegan Finnerty, from Hull, added: “Girls definitely get a great opportunity by coming here. We are treated with a lot of respect, the same as the boys. We are not outcasts.

“In some places people underestimate you because you are a girl but they don’t do that here. It’s even better than I expected. I was a bit anxious about working with all the guys but everybody in the group is fine”.