He may hold the most prestigious role in UK engineering, but Sir Jim McDonald’s earliest foray into the sector was disastrous. As a 15-year-old in the 1970s, he was in a rock band and bought himself a secondhand amplifier. In an attempt to get more power out of the device, he took a screwdriver to it.

“It was like that scene from Back to the Future,” says the outgoing president of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE). “I went flying across my bedroom, holding my guitar, and hit the wall with some considerable force.”

Fortunately for McDonald, and the engineering fraternity, he lived to tell the tale.

After starting out as an electrical engineer in the power distribution sector, he forged a successful career in higher education, including 15 years as vice-chancellor at the University of Strathclyde.

He became RAE president in 2019, and speaks to the Observer the day before he finishes his five-year stint in a post he says has been the pinnacle of his career.

The academy, which was founded in 1976 to encourage excellence in engineering, is known for its work to promote the profession as a career. It also runs a prestigious fellowship scheme, to which up to 60 of the country’s most notable engineers are admitted each year.

Previous high-profile presidents have included former Anglo American chair Sir John Parker; he was replaced in 2014 by Dame Ann Dowling, who had been head of the University of Cambridge’s engineering department.

With John Lazar, chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, taking over this month, McDonald hopes he has left a strong legacy.

Speaking at the academy’s office near Piccadilly in central London, he says: “My dad always said, whatever you are given to do, leave it in a better place than you got it.” And this has been a driving force during his tenure.

A long-term champion of tackling climate crisis – he calls it “the biggest challenge of the century” – he has emphasised the need to ensure there are enough skilled engineers to support the net zero drive. It is a challenging task. The National Grid recently estimated that the country will need to appoint 400,000 green energy recruits if it is to hit its 2050 target.

“Very often, when we talk about achieving net zero, we talk about building infrastructure and digital capability, and skills are tabbed on the end,” he says. “Skills should be seen as a national asset.”

After helping to steer the RAE through the pandemic, he has been concentrating on encouraging young people into the profession. This has included driving its “This is Engineering” campaign, which aims to show teenagers the range of careers engineering can lead to, with work on anything from racing cars to perfume.

If his work to promote engineering in schools is anywhere near as successful as his promotion of the profession at home, it could be a fruitful few years for recruitment. His twin daughters and his son are all engineers, while his wife is a podiatrist – though McDonald likes to call her a “foot engineer”.

But schools and higher education are just one part of closing the skills gap. McDonald believes a “whole systems approach” is needed: “We must get better coordination across [education] providers, clearer statements from industry on what they require and then, of course, the government can get behind that with policy development.”

He adds that there has been a “welcome sense of urgency” around the skills agenda since the election.

Another key part of the challenge will be to retrain workers in carbon- intensive industries whose jobs are now under threat. The imminent closures of the Grangemouth oil refinery in central Scotland and the blast furnaces at Port Talbot, south Wales, which will result in about 3,000 jobs being lost, show just what an impact on jobs the transition could have.

Unions are worried. GMB general secretary Gary Smith recently called on the government to stop “decarbonisation through deindustrialisation”.

While reluctant to be pulled into a political discussion, McDonald says he believes there are opportunities for reskilling, at Grangemouth in particular: “Grangemouth has a great harbourfront and has lots of good engineering capability and skills. Let’s see how that fits in into low-carbon energy infrastructure or production.”

McDonald has first-hand experience of an industry reinventing itself. He was born in 1957 in Govan, the heart of Glasgow’s shipbuilding industry. After a period of decline, it has been revitalised by BAE after winning contracts to build five Type 26 frigates for the Ministry of Defence.

When he was growing up in the 1960s, his family relied on the shipbuilding sector. His father, who died when McDonald was 12, had worked as a ropemaker, and his two older brothers also worked in the shipyards. He fondly recalls going into work with his dad as a child, and believes this had a huge influence on his becoming an engineer.

“Glasgow was the second city of the empire and was built around industrial competence, manufacturing, making things and creating opportunity,” he says. “We need to see energy, and decarbonising energy, as a big economic opportunity today as well.”

But the UK doesn’t have long. McDonald believes there is a “two- to three-year window” in which the country can become a manufacturing leader in offshore wind.

There are promising signs, though. He points to the £350m Sumitomo cable manufacturing plant in the Cromarty Firth, and a £1.4bn cable factory in Hunterston, Ayrshire. He says he is also aware of “good discussions” taking place regarding turbine manufacturers setting up in the country.

This optimism from the 67-year-old, who was given a knighthood in 2012 for services to engineering and education, is matched by his energy.

Though stepping down from the RAE, McDonald holds a number of other roles, including co-chairing the Scottish government’s energy advisory board, and sitting on the boards of Scottish Power, the UK’s National Physical Laboratory and, until recently, the mining equipment company Weir Group.

This is alongside his day job as vice-chancellor at Strathclyde University, a position he has held since 2009.

But despite being of an age when some choose to retire, he isn’t slowing down. Earlier this month, he became the chair of Enginuity, a charity aimed at closing the skills gap in engineering.

Ever the optimist, he is positive about the future, both his own and the world’s. He says that while it is easy to become “paralysed” by the scale and the complexity of the challenges the climate crisis poses, he is full of hope and confident that solutions can be found. And, naturally, he believes engineers will be at the forefront of this.

“We know what we need to do, we know why we need to do it, and we know where we need to do it,” he says. “The ‘when’ is now.”

CV

Age 67
Family Married, 3 children (2 girls, 1 boy – all engineers) all with partners, one granddaughter.
Education BSc (electronic and electrical engineering), MSc (power engineering), PhD (power system economics) – all Strathclyde University.
Pay £400,000
Last holiday Salmon fishing on the Spey at Aberlour with the whole family.
Best advice he’s been given From my dad – whatever job you’re given, work hard and leave things better than you found them.
Biggest career mistake not realising quickly enough that policy and economics are critical to ensuring the value of engineering is realised. I get it now and there’s no better zealot that a convert.
Phrase you overuses “We’ll need a systems approach to solve this problem!”
How he relaxes Play badminton regularly, golf occasionally, fish and watch Celtic playing football.