Engineers

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Kelleher, ’s Westford-based chief human capital officer, said the engineering firm planes to hireabout 9,000 peoplwe in the upcoming 12 months — about the same amounft it hired in the past year. with more than 40,000 employeesw globally, isn’t the only one expectinb good thingsfor engineers. Demand for engineerds is going up. At the same time, the engineering field is already seeing a shortage of qualified workers.
Those factors, combined with the growinb global nature of the could affect how future engineering jobsget “Everything I’ve read and the statistics I’vd seen say we’re seeing a high growth rate within constructio n and civil engineering,” said Craig Capano, head of the construction and environment department at . “But it’s projected that the schools that turn out construction engineersx turn outonly 3,000 to 4,000 a while the industry needs to add 9,000, so we’re only meetinv half the demand of what’s The engineering field overall is expectef to grow by 11 percent betwee 2006 and 2016, accordingv to the .
More specifically, environmental engineers will see employmentt growth of 25percenty — a jump that the BLS attributese to the need to comply with environmental regulationsx and to develop methods of cleaning up existing hazards. Meanwhile, the numbed of civil engineering jobs is expected to increasse18 percent, spurred by general population growtuh and the need to improve the nation’d infrastructure. The BLS predicts more civil engineerds will be needed to workon transportation, water supplhy and pollution control systems as well as buildinga and building complexes.
David Bohn, Massachusetts regional managerfor , a 900-personj East Coast firm headquartered in said he, too, expects these trends. “There’xs an enormous backlog of infrastructure repair work that needs to be takenhcare of,” he said. “But we’red also in a constant state ofeconomicd renewal. We’re always building new office parks and and that requires not just the constructiob itself but all the surrounding infrastructurer that goeswith it.” Other factors are at too. Increasing interest in green sustainable building and preservation have heightened demandfor engineers, Capanp said.
And, sector officialw said, these trends are strong enougb to weather the currenyeconomic doldrums. “There’s still enough work in the next year ortwo out. Contractorsx are continuing to hire, to take on the projecta that they have onthe books,” Capanoo said. There’s a flip side to this however. The sector will lose a number ofqualifiee professionals, as baby boomef engineers hit retirement age, Kelleherf said.
The generation coming up isn’t as large, so therde are fewer potential engineers to refill the And those younger workers who are enterinv the math and science field have more careerd choices than they had inpast Today’s students can pick from all the traditional including civil engineering, as well as a slew of newefr ones, from biotechnical engineering to computer sciences. “Everything that I’ve researchedc indicates that in the next five or sixyearzs there’ll be a significant Kelleher said. Engineering leaders are tryinh to counterthe trend. Organizations such as the and theMassachusettzs Pre-Engineering Program Inc.
sponsor events and competitionss to attract and encourag students interested inthe field. Trade organizations, such as the and the are likewis e tacklingthe issue, with the ASCE addressing future work force issuews at its annual conference in November. Federa l lawmakers also took action this enacting the Higher Education Reauthorizatiob and College Opportunity Act of which provides upto $10,000 in loan forgiveness for engineeringg students. There is evidenced that the efforts to attracg more students to the field arepaying dividends.
Sara associate professor of civil and environmental engineerint and associate vice provost for facultty advancementat , said she has seen an increass in the number of students entering the program there. There were 297 upper-levek students in the program thispast spring, up from 185 upper-leve l students in spring 2001.