Hartford Business Journal

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Visit chelseagroton.com/growthatbusiness to learn how we can grow that business of yours together. 273 Hebron Avenue, Glastonbury, CT and locations throughout New London County CT works to expand engineering pipeline By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com W ith seven more months to go until she collects her civil-engineering degree, UConn senior Georgina Tal- bot already has a job lined up. But the 21-year-old Westport native won't be taking her skills into the red-hot aerospace sector, where Pratt & Whitney Co., Sikorsky Aircraft and their Connecticut network of smaller manufacturers and related vendors, too, are hungry for engineering talent. Instead, she's joining Turner Construc- tion in Connecticut, where she interned this past summer, at least for the next year or two. Turner says starting pay for its field engineers right out of college typically is around $60,000. Talbot, whose father is a mining engineer, said she's less into manufacturing and aero- space, but Pratt and other Connecticut pro- ducers have had success pursuing her peer engineering pupils and plying them with internships and jobs as well. Talbot's ability to find work well ahead of graduation reflects the growing demand for engineers in Connecticut and the intense competition among employers of all sizes and industries — particularly manufacturing — to woo talent. That demand has been accompanied by a steady uptick in engineering enrollment at many of Connecticut's secondary engineer- ing schools, as colleges work with industry to strengthen the workforce pipeline. Engineering enrollments, school adminis- trators say, were trending up even before Gro- ton submarine builder Electric Boat disclosed plans to hire 1,600 workers this year — includ- ing engineers — and thousands more in the next five years. Over the summer, East Hart- ford jet-engine builder Pratt & Whitney also announced its intent to bring aboard some 8,000 workers in coming years. Sikorsky, too, is hiring in Connecticut. While the pronouncements are welcome news for a state economy still wrestling to recover all the jobs lost in the Great Reces- sion, they have sparked angst in some quar- ters, particularly among smaller manufac- turers and their supporting cast of machine shops and other subcontractors. Privately, they worry about being unable to compete for talent against their larger, deeper-pocketed brethren who can often dangle better career opportunities, pay and benefits than they can. "It's certainly not going to get any better with what Pratt and others are going to be doing,'' said Jerry Clupper, executive direc- tor of the New Haven Manufacturers Asso- ciation. "We have the situation where more companies now include engineering in their services. We don't have enough engineers being graduated, particularly in the disci- plines that feed manufacturing.'' The reason is that manufacturing isn't the only industry experiencing a domestic and global revival of demand for its products and services. The commercial and residen- tial construction, energy, environmental and bioscience/biomedical sectors all depend on the problem-solving skills of engineers and are looking to fill open positions. Growing outreach The Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA), the pro-business lobby whose membership includes manufactur- ers of all sizes, three years ago conducted a study that found thousands of unfilled jobs in 16 separate skill categories, including engineering, said CBIA Vice President Bon- nie Stewart. To stem the shortage threat, the state, schools, colleges, companies and others are trying more and earlier efforts at outreach to potential engineers — as early as junior high school. The result is a reported spike in engineering enrollment at many of Connecti- cut's leading engineering incubators. Rather than vie among each other for engineers and other production talent, Elec- tric Boat, Pratt and Sikorsky are among large employers working to expand the talent pool. "The big guys are dependent on the little guys and the little guys are dependent on the big guys,'' Stewart said. Electric Boat, for instance, participates in an alliance of large and small manufacturers who are reaching out to public high schools and the state's technical high schools and community colleges to stir youth interest in pursuing careers in manufacturing. Recently, Congressman Joe Courtney announced that 92 percent of participants in a "manufacturing pipeline" workforce training CT Colleges' Engineering Program Enrollments* 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Central CT State 814 788 813 782 1,024 1,017 Trinity College 59 62 75 76 86 62 UConn 1,976 2,127 2,467 2,747 3,046 3,185 University of Hartford 424 496 564 592 666 664 * U N D E R G R A D U A T E S O N L Y ; A S O F F A L L S E M E S T E R S O U R C E S : I N D I V I D U A L C O L L E G E S

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