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“THERE’S A LOT GOING ON ALREADY TO BOOST SKILLS, BUT IT’S VERY SILOED. IT NEEDS BRINGING TOGETHER… THE REPORT WAS A CALL TO ACTION FOR GOVERNMENT, INDUSTRY AND ACADEMIA” PROGRAMME DIRECTOR FOR BUSINESS INNOVATION YOLANDE HERBATHThere is a good chance that certain types of employment won’t be required a decade into the future, as self-driving cars and other smart transport systems become the norm. However, a swathe of new, more challenging and creative job opportunities is about to open up. If the UK encourages and trains its future workers in these fields, it will gain a leadership role in a huge global marketplace.The Intelligent Mobility (IM) Skills Strategy report, published in October 2016 by the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC), estimated that the worldwide market for smart new transport methods, collectively known as “Intelligent Mobility” (IM), will reach £900bn annually by 2025. The report found that a coherent skills strategy is needed to prepare for a new generation of IM jobs to avoid a skills gap of 742,250 by 2025. In other words, this many jobs in Intelligent Mobility-related fields will go unfilled by UK workers, who will lack the abilities and experience needed. “The report was a call to action for government, industry and academia,” says Yolande Herbath, the TSC’s Programme Director for Business Innovation. The good news is that this gap can be closed, and the TSC’s IM Skills Strategy report outlines the best way forward. The government has already been working for some time to create a workforce that is skilled in traditional STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and maths. What the Transport Systems Catapult has shown in its IM Skills Strategy report, is that it is crucial now to boost skills in what it calls the “disruptive” STEM and human sciences landscape.Fields like Human-Machine Interaction, Cyber Security, Virtual Reality, Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence transcend the boundaries of traditional disciplines. “Those types of skills are where the real value seems to be in terms of Intelligent Mobility,” Herbath says. “Those are the high-value skills that are going to make a real difference.”She adds that “there’s a lot going on already” in order to boost skills within the transport industry, “but it’s very siloed, there’s nothing bringing it all together.” One of the TSC’s recommendations is for the creation of an Intelligent Mobility Community Hub. Herbath explains that this virtual portal would, “look at what is already going on in the industry as HOW INVESTMENT IN ‘DISRUPTIVE’ STEM SKILLS, SUCH AS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, IS VITAL TO FILL THE TALENT GAP AND ENSURE THE UK CAPITALISES ON THE BOOMING INTELLIGENT MOBILITY MARKET SKILLING UP»SKILLS GAPIMAGINE17