As the skills shortage continues to deepen and with a growing need for more women to take up a career as a technician, the expertise of women engineers in the road transport industry needs to be celebrated more, with so many working in critical roles.
Among them are Daniela Rathke, who has been an irtec assessor for a decade and is a director and technical trainer of Vehicle Inspection and Training Services (VIATS), a company that she founded in 2011.
Vehicle inspection has been a labour of love, since she came to the UK from Germany in 2004 to take on a role as a vehicle inspector and then technical trainer, at the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA), which merged with the Driving Standards Agency in 2014 and is now, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA).
Rathke explains that she set up Herefordshire-based VIATS to ensure that the haulage and passenger transport industries “still got the relevant information and training they needed“, while also being able to continue her love and passion for inspecting vehicles.
She has always enjoyed teaching and helping businesses stay compliant, and through her own company, VIATS, she can do what she loves the most in the UK and across Europe – inspect HGVs and PCVs, and deliver inspection courses to the industry.
SKILLS GAP
Technicians are predominantly male, so Rathke is in the minority, but with a skills shortage in the profession in general, there is an ever-growing need to attract more people – and especially, females – into the role.
Being at the beating heart of the issue, Rathke knows first-hand the difficulties that exist with employing technicians in the road transport industry, and she believes it is especially severe on the HGV side.
“We need more technicians in the industry,” she says. “When you look at my dealers, they are taking people now from other countries and I have recently trained up a lot of people from South Africa, for example.”
Rathke believes that there is a need to advertise technician roles differently and get away from the impression that it is a greasy job, as by making it more attractive as a career, people would talk about it more positively and it would entice more into the profession.
“We need to advertise the trade slightly differently to make it more interesting and show the different paths that you can take in your career as that would really help,” she says. “You might start on the shop floor, but that does not mean that you stop there, as there are lots of different opportunities and routes to take.”
IRTEC & IRTE
Rathke is an irtec assessor and believes that she might be one of the only women that are in that role in the UK, so is clearly committed to the value of irtec.
“The DVSA is pushing for it and you need to have it,” she says. “I had a customer on the phone, and he said, but we are qualified. I said yes, you are, and you have lots of experience, but you need this extra piece of paper.”
Having been a member of the Institute of Road Transport Engineers (IRTE) for many years, she believes this has provided great value in her own professional development, through seminars, networking, workshops and the support that she has received.
With the IRTE Bus & Coach Skills Challenge on the horizon, Rathke has also set her sights on entering a team alongside her partner, who is a transport manager for a small bus company in Hereford.
“We have got a couple of bus mechanics there and I want to go up against the big operators,” she says. “The Skills Challenge is great because it shows people that we are all in the same boat and we can have a look at what each other does, show our skills off and share knowledge.”
