Education & Student Resources

Education - A Crucial Issue Now and for the Future

One of the often heard pleas whenever ITS professionals get together is the lack of trained ITS personnel. This, it is claimed, is holding back the introduction of ITS as there are too few people to undertake the work that all can see is necessary to address the transport challenges of the 21st century. This affects those in the purchasing organisations, who do not have the expertise to define and specify their requirements, those in the manufacturing arena who do not have the expertise to design and manufacture the equipment needed, and those in the service sectors who cannot obtain the expertise necessary to design and operate ITS systems.

How have we got into such a state with  a new and rapidly growing technology, and more importantly how can we address this dilemma? If we look at the traditional ways in which engineers are trained we get some clues as to what we need to do. 30 years ago, most engineers in the UK took a first degree in one of the engineering disciplines and that gave sufficient broadly based skill to take a job at the bottom of the professional engineering market. The graduates were then given a rude awakening either, for the lucky ones, through a training scheme, or by less formal, but nevertheless effective means of moving around companies to get a good background in all activities ofthe company. Those who joined a rapidly developing sector, such as electronics, then hung onto the technology and grew with the technology as it developed, changing and developing skills as necessary to keep in touch with new developments. This often meant that time had to be squeezed into a busy schedule to attend seminars and other activities to keep up with the current technology.

Sadly this approach has been lost over the years as organisations have sought to become more efficient and the time taken to undertake these training tasks has been squashed out.

Looking at this scene, it seems we first need a good education system that will provide basic engineering skills, which will include ITS where appropriate at first degree and masters levels. Then all organisations, both public and private sectors must take training and skill developments seriously and not assume that the skill can be bought in. Maybe in the short term it can, at a price, but in the long term it must lead to a reducing skill base and fewer staff able to work in the area. We need to be able to take people with some understanding of the technology and give them enthusiasm to develop those skills and time and opportunity to explore the new technologies.  The engineering institutions have done a good job in encouraging continuing professional development, but still it is rare for the ITS professional to bring along a young engineer to any of the seminars or workshop events. If we are not willing to train our own staff, we really cannot expect others to train our staff for us.

Help is at hand ... read on below for routes to ITS training and knowledge.

Student Membership of ITS (UK)

Full time students enrolled at Universities which are Members of ITS (UK) - Aberdeen, Newcastle, Leeds, Loughborough, Southampton, City (London), Kingston, Westminster and Imperial College - can join ITS (UK) for free.  Other full time students can join for a small administration fee.  For more information, click here.  For an application form, click here.

Course Title Qualification Location Date
       

ITS Training Provision - April 2010

Note: The following information was current as at April 2010 and applies to training undertaken or planned in 2010. The information cannot be guaranteed to be comprehensive, partly because of uncertainties in the ITS content of some courses. In the courses listed this ITS content varies from very little to substantial, so it is recommended to contact the Course providers for further information.

This Training portal details the availability of current relevant courses, ITS training providers together with the web links that will enable the reader to assemble the information.

Category A contains information on University courses suitable for students seeking a qualification (BEng, MEng, MSc etc). These are predominantly courses lasting between 1 and 4 years where the course contains modules, or parts of modules, dealing with ITS. An example would be the MSc in Transportation Planning and Engineering at the University of Southampton.

Category B concerns short courses for ITS professionals, of typically between 1 and 5 days. An example here would be the 1 day course at Aston University on “ITS in a Sustainable Society”. These types of courses are mostly ‘stand-alone’ although some are parts of longer University courses delivered in a way to allow part-time attendance by Professionals.

Conferences and Seminars are also an excellent source of learning.  See here for currently booking ITS events.

In addition to the university courses, short courses and conferences listed in the linked documents, various professional institutions also organise various training events for their members and others. These professional institutions include:
• Institution of Civil Engineers (www.ice.org.uk)
• The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (www.ciht.org.uk)
• Transport Planning Society (www.tps.org.uk)
• The Institution of Engineering and Technology (www.theiet.org)
• Institute of Highway Engineers (www.theihe.org)