Top aerospace executive praises university apprenticeships initiative

A top executive from global aero engine giant Rolls-Royce has given a ringing endorsement to a University of Sheffield initiative that gives young people cutting edge engineering skills.

Rolls-Royce director of global manufacturing, Dr Hamid Mughal, was speaking at the National Summit for Apprentices and Higher Vocational Education, held at the universitys Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing (AMRC), in the Sheffield City Region.

He told attendees, including Business Secretary Dr Vince Cable, that if he was leaving school today he would want to be an apprentice at the AMRC Training Centre.

“If I was 16 years old and I was given a hundred choices for careers, I would choose here every time,” said Dr Mughal.

“You cannot ask for a better environment for tomorrows engineers to create the complex, customer-oriented values and solutions for industry, the economy and for the UK than this environment.

“In years ahead, long after people like me have retired, I think when people look back at the AMRC and say ‘What has the AMRC done? – apart from all the technologies and infrastructure change – I think people will remember the AMRC for creating world-class engineers.”

Dr Mughal told the summit the future was about creating deep scientific knowledge and values that develop commercial success, capable processes and very capable people.

“Why is the AMRC the ideal place for developing those kinds of skills? It is very simple. You have over 100 companies operating here,” Dr Mughal said.

“They all have customer-oriented problems which means customer-oriented opportunities for complex solutions to be developed by the people here. Wonderful innovative environments – we have the Nuclear AMRC, we have the AMRC, we have the Training Centre and Design Prototyping and Testing Centre.”