Everyone wants to talk about the technology. Automation, digitalization and AI dominate every conversation about industrial transformation, and for good reason. But after nearly two decades in this industry, I've come to a conclusion that runs slightly counter to the grain; the technology is rarely what decides whether a transformation programme succeeds or fails.

The people do. 

When I'm asked what gives our business its edge in the UK, my honest answer isn't a specific piece of technology. Engineering businesses tend to operate with broadly similar tools. What actually sets businesses apart is what their people do with those tools. They specify a system properly, adapt it to a genuinely difficult site, and make it count when a project reaches its crunch point, whether that's the final week before a system goes live or the moment a contract needs to be won and delivered. 

The Skills Gap is Real, and it's Been Building for Years 

There's no getting around the fact that engineering has a skills shortage, and it's been years in the making. Across our industry, experienced people have been retiring faster than they've been replaced, and that gap doesn't close overnight. Too many businesses are only realizing this now, as senior engineers leave the industry. By then, they’re already five to 10 years too late to solve the problem through hiring alone. 

The businesses that are ahead of the problem are the ones that started investing in early-career talent long before they had to. At ABB, we've built graduate and outreach programmes across the UK and Ireland, and a lot of the effort behind them is voluntary. Engineers and leaders go into schools and universities, working with community groups to support people from disadvantaged or atypical backgrounds. Some of the strongest engineers on my team today came through exactly that kind of route. 

What we look for isn't always what you'd expect. Competition for every graduate and early-career role has intensified sharply, and the candidates who reach the final selection stage have already cleared a high bar in qualifications and technical grounding; that part's now a given. What separates them at that stage is their curiosity, resilience, transferable skills, and the right attitude.  

Bringing People with You 

Bringing people with you on a change journey means far more than making an announcement and expecting new ways of working to land on their own. 

In my experience, the biggest gains haven't come from technical training, even though we invest heavily in that, too. They've come from coaching and mentoring. That means pairing people up, encouraging senior engineers to pass on what they know, and making space for the kind of face-to-face relationship-building that can't be replicated over email or in a single scheduled call.  

Leadership must model this approach, not just endorse it. If senior people aren't visibly engaged, transformation programes fail, however good the underlying technology. I think of it as leading by example, and this can take years to build, not months.

But the return on that investment is one of the clearest advantages we have. 

Automation Doesn't Remove People from the Equation 

Autonomous operations are coming, but in my view, there's a gap between how that's often portrayed and what it actually means in practice. 

The comparison I use is aviation. A transatlantic flight in the 1950s needed a cockpit crew of five. Today, a much larger aircraft can be flown by two people, with autopilot handling most of the journey. But there is still always a human at the controls, and there always will be. Someone still has to build, service and maintain that aircraft. Autonomous industrial operations will follow the same pattern: increasingly automated, but never people-free. The nature of the job changes; the need for people doesn't disappear. 

In Azerbaijan, we're helping electrify the Sangachal industrial terminal, replacing onsite power generation with a direct connection to the national grid supported by synchronous condensers, large rotating machines that maintain electrical stability as more renewable power comes onto that grid. It's complex engineering, pulling together components sourced from across the world. It takes skilled people to specify, integrate and commission this work.

AI can support that process, but it isn't running it. 

The same is true of HyNet, one of the UK's first industrial carbon-capture and storage clusters, where our team provides the automation, telecoms and cybersecurity systems that will manage the transport of CO2 captured from industrial emitters across the North West of England and North Wales to permanent offshore storage.

Or consider Dogger Bank, one of the world's largest offshore wind farms, where we delivered the control, telecoms and cybersecurity systems behind its offshore and onshore substations. Projects like these don't run themselves, and even once they're operating autonomously, they need people to keep them running, maintained and upgraded over decades. 

What a Future-Ready Workforce Looks Like 

The pressures shaping our industry aren't going away. Energy security, affordability and sustainability will continue to drive demand for skilled engineers for years to come. I don't expect that trajectory to change, whatever happens with any particular technology cycle. 

What I hope changes is how deliberately organizations invest in the people who will meet that demand. That means continuing to widen searches where talent comes from, rather than relying on a narrow, traditional pipeline. It means treating reskilling and mentoring as core business activities, not an add-on. And it means leadership taking real ownership of workforce development, because if it isn't visibly a priority at that level, it won't become one anywhere else. 

I'm confident in where this will take us. Some of the people on my team today will be running this business in years to come, and I've watched enough of them grow into that responsibility to know the investment actually does work.

The technology will keep changing. The organizations that treat their people as the real differentiators, rather than an afterthought to the technology, are the ones that will keep pace with it.