Enginuity protects Aerospace skills with engineering game

About Enginuity

Enginuity serve the needs of the UK’s engineering skills community, providing qualifications design, assurance, certification and awarding services as a not-for-profit.   The organisation also develops data informatics and skills tools to for engineering skills engagement, development and retention.

 The Challenge

Government studies for the engineering sector highlight that the aging demographic among the existing UK engineering workforce means to gain enough candidates they would need around 186,000 skilled recruits each year until 2024. 

The issue of tacit knowledge transfer and skills retention for recovery is critical in Aerospace, Automotive and other key sectors of manufacturing.  Innovative recruitment and formal qualifications are useful but, knowledge capture from existing ‘leaver risk’ communities must be given equal consideration. Informal knowledge capture and exchange is essential in the current situation where lack of knowledge retention is damaging industry and recovery potential.

The main driver for our initiative is in support of accelerating the ‘Knowledge Transfer and Retention’ in both ageing workforce (taking early retirement), and sector leavers (a growing issue).

The inspiration

Enginuity’s ambition is to enable a more skilled and agile workforce through developing a gamified learning platform to capture and exchange best practice, informal and tacit knowledge and expertise from skilled workers. 

This complimentary approach to formal accredited and assured learning will enable companies to ‘create their own games’ and recognising the need for timely and rapidly deployed process for knowledge capture and creation of agile learning solutions. 

Our initiative builds on the work of Paul Sutherland, an innovator who has developed the BrightGame system. The established innovation learning game process uses the theory of constraints (Time, Money, People), to explore best critical action paths given different topical business scenarios. 

The new joint initiative has seen this game creation system digitised and re-imagined as a learning platform in which scenario based learning games can be created by the Employers themselves to:
– Share best practice 
– Assist in tacit operational knowledge transfer 
– Support skill retention 

By simply answering questions and uploading media, .this unique platform will capture key learning goals, scenarios and automate co-design of game artefacts. The game uses the BrightGame system, enabling creation without the user requiring any knowledge other than their own expert technical or topical skills.

The system automates game design, render and expression! Indicate the sector that your solution will focus on.

The outputs

The goal was to create a process of game creation that inspires engagement in learning, enabling non trainers to establish games without gamification expertise.

The demonstrator enables scenario based ‘learning by doing’ supporting Aerospace skills shortages in field of high skills loss critical to sustaining and recovery in the industry. In such domains there are a lower proportion of young people vs older workers (aged 45+) and forecasts indicate 8000 will leave the sector and only 5000 joined during 2021. 

The project created a unique self-serve process applied to potential level 4 ‘leavers’ capturing best practice and tacit expertise. What is new and innovative about your solution and how will it change the current provision for vocational learning?

We have developed a practical deployable toolset through which employers can create their own knowledge capture solutions; the platform will enable easy to create, fun and engaging games for technical and operational staff.

Read more on the Enginuity website here:  https://enginuity.org/news/brain-games-block-brain-drains/