Engineering growth area

Record orders and revenue for Honeywell are indicative of growth trends across the region and are leading to more demand for qualified people, according to the company's executives.

Attending the company's 2007 Middle East Users Group conference in Dubai, Larry Perkins regional general manager for Honeywell Process Solutions in the Middle East, referred to expected growth in the need for engineering man-hours.

"Research indicates this will rise from 50 million man-hours in 2006 to 350 million by 2009," said Perkins. "We saw a 60% growth in engineering staff in the last calendar year. We're managing the growth and getting a lot of talent form places like India and Egypt, as well as drawing on Honeywell's global resources.

"Localisation is an important part of what we're trying to do. For instance, in Saudi Arabia we took on six interns last year, this year we're targeting 15. Our challenge is how to target locals and then use them effectively."

Paul Orzeske, the company's vice president and general manager for the EMEA region agreed.

"Localisation is a big topic for us and has a lot of facets to it. When we hire people we try to give them a long-term perspective. We want to keep the best people, make sure they know Honeywell is the best place to work and use them to recruit others.

"We're in a major hiring mode. In the short-term we have to convince people we have the best place to work. In the long-term we're investing in apprenticeships and university relationship programmes in the region.

"We feel we can offer a graduating technologist a whole lot more over a career and expose new graduates to technology they wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to work with otherwise."

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