Marine Engineering industry to hire mid-career engineers

What This Means For…

The Marine Engineering Industry

1. Helps to speed up both the hiring and training cycles of getting locals to fill the job vacancies.
2. Strengthens the Singaporean Core as more skilled PMEs engineers can join the sector – address structural unemployment of engineers by converting non-marine engineers into marine engineers.

The Employer

1. Alternative source for skilled manpower with engineering background.
2. Strengthen human capital through structured and funded training.

The Employee

1. Allow mid-career engineers to remain as engineers instead of looking for other employments outside their engineering field.
2. Higher starting salaries of $3,500 to $4,000 per month, which may progressively increase with good performance.
3. Structured training and development, which can lead to higher wages and job positions for him/her.

The increasing demand for oil and gas has led to the surge of offshore rig construction.  In Singapore, this is a major industry which contributes 70 per cent of the world’s jack-up rigs and has 70 per cent market share in the conversion of Floating Production Storage and Offloading Vessels (FPSOs). As this industry continues to grow, Singapore yards are revamping their operations and ramping up their capacity and capability to fulfil the raising orders.

Conversion Programme for Mid-Career Engineers

There is growing demand to have more skilled engineers to supervise the construction of vessels and rigs.  Most employers are currently hiring fresh graduates from the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), polytechnics and universities.

While the industry continues to hire fresh graduates, the NTUC Marine Engineering Cluster, together with NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) and the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), have plans to attract Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs) with engineering skills to join the marine and offshore rig construction industry through a conversion programme.  This will help to speed up both the hiring and training cycles of getting locals to fill the job vacancies.

The conversion programme will target 60 mid-career engineers, mostly from the general manufacturing industry, to undergo both classroom and on-the-job training.  This will allow mid-career engineers to remain as engineers instead of looking for other employments outside their engineering field.  This will then help to prevent structural unemployment within the profession as engineers can easily move into the marine sector to take up engineering jobs.

The conversion programme aims to create a new pathway for mid-career engineers to enter the marine and offshore rig industry which requires investment on skill conversion.  It is a good initiative to change the hiring mindset of the major employers, especially towards the matured PMEs.

The conversion programme takes the form of a pilot Place-and-Train (PnT) programme for Marine & Offshore Engineer. Under the new PnT programme, the Cluster together with its partners will engage the industry to:

1. Hire local PMEs with 5 to 8 years of engineering experience or a diploma qualification in engineering as Marine and Offshore Engineers;
2. Have a starting salary of at least $3,500 to $4,000;
3. Put in place employment bond for the new recruit(s); and
4. Place at least 60 local and mid-career PMEs in the industry within two years.

WDA will set aside $1.2 million to fund the new PnT programme over the next two years. The funding will be used to provide marine and offshore companies with course fee subsidies and training allowances for employees hired through the PnT programme.

The Cluster had earlier collaborated with e2i, WDA and NTUC LearningHub on a PnT programme to attract and train new entrants into the industry.  The $4.5 million PnT programme was launched in August last year and the industry has recruited 20 Marine Technical Associates and 12 Machine Specialists through the programmes till date.

The Place-and-Train (PnT) programme for Marine & Offshore Engineer was launched with the help of Guest-of-Honour Mdm Halimah Yacob, Speaker of Parliament and Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC, at the NTUC Marine Engineering Cluster National Day Observation Ceremony held this morning at ST Marine. About 1,000 participants, mainly staff from ST Marine and union leaders from the Cluster’s unions were present.

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