February 2024
Survey Solutions Spotlight It is no secret that the effects of climate change have some serious implications for our infrastructure in the UK, with rising temperatures affecting roads and railway lines, rising waters impacting bridges and roads, and the net zero target looming large in the distance. In this newsletter we ask what does the future of surveying look like? How can we inspire the next generation to get into surveying? And also give you an insight into what we have been up to over the past few months. Happy reading!
We’d better find more surveyors! There has for some time been a need to attract more people to work in the surveying sector and it’s something that we at UTSS are keen to help address. The Energy Secretary, Grant Shapps, recently announced that a report recommending upgrades to electricity infrastructure was about to be published with plans to significantly reduce the time it takes to build new power lines. That’s all well and good and a great idea, but has the Government considered how this is going to happen? The National Grid is quoted as saying that five times more power lines are needed in the next five years than in the past 30 years! That’s an eyewatering increase!
Having the right talent pool to design, plan and install this wonderful infrastructure is mission critical. We are advocates of green power and the role wind and solar have to play but we need to attract talent if the new upgrades to infrastructure are going to happen speedily. One of the things we are doing is getting involved in a project, Get Kids into Survey. Okay, we appreciate that this cohort will take time to make their way through the system, but we have to start somewhere. And it’s a really neat approach. The project began in 2017 with a poster designed to help those of us working in the survey space to share with our children to help them understand what we got up to at work. It’s grown from there into a really exciting project involving schools and parents. There is now an array of resources to capture children’s imagination and make them more aware of how power gets to them. Everything is presented in a really fun and engaging way. Watch this space for more on our involvement!