Photo by giorgi/Adobe Stock
Scotland plays a crucial role in building ships for the UK’s Royal Navy, as well as for military export customers and the commercial sector. Much of this activity is focused on the River Clyde, including the city of Glasgow, as part of a wider ecosystem of companies delivering maritime products and services. In recognition of the outsized contribution made by the sector, both to national security and to economic prosperity, the UK Government has launched a National Shipbuilding Strategy to bolster the resilience and competitiveness of the industrial base and overcome challenges such as access to critical skills.
This ambition has also been reflected in initiatives at the devolved and local levels. The Clyde Mission, led by the Scottish Government and launched in 2020, unites relevant industry and government stakeholders to enhance the growth and prosperity of the River Clyde shipbuilding industry. For this purpose, the Clyde Mission aims to improve access, retention and growth of critical skills for shipbuilding on the Clyde and supporting industries. More specifically, there is a limited understanding of the labour market, how resources could be better managed to help address capacity issues related to peaks and troughs in activity, and how different companies on the Clyde capture skills data and to what degree there are synergies or opportunities to manage their workforces’ skills collaboratively.
RAND Europe was asked by the Clyde Mission enterprise partners and Skills Development Scotland to help enhance understanding of the skills gaps and associated issues affecting the maritime sector in the region. To deliver the study, RAND Europe’s research team used a mixed methods approach including an industry survey and interviews with industry, education and local government stakeholders to identify future skills needs for the Clyde’s maritime sector.
The study achieved the following objectives:
Despite the growing strategic importance and coherence within the UK shipbuilding and maritime sectors, the sector is confronted by numerous challenges to growing and sustaining key skills. Although there are positive signs of growth in early careers and improvements in workforce demographics, the maritime industries on the Clyde face fierce competition for skills and a need to revitalise maritime and shipbuilding careers to attract and retain workforce to meet growing demand.
Drawing on the analysis conducted for this study, and taking into account the wider opportunities for regionalisation of skills development on the Clyde, RAND Europe proposes the establishment of a Workforce Optimisation for the River Clyde (WORC) planning group. This group would convene initiatives currently pursued by companies or training institutions under one umbrella and act as a central oversight and delivery body for maritime skills development on the Clyde. It would be comprised of industry, local government, education and training sector representatives, and its role would be to identify long-term demand and supply signals to strategically plan workforce utilisation and development. The planning group would also have a delivery arm focused on concrete interventions to grow and sustain skills such as career support, continuous professional development and bespoke interventions for critical skills.
Charlotte Kleberg
