Engineering

Engineering is fast becoming a sector where sustainability skill sets are becoming increasingly important.

Sustainability professionals in the engineering sector enable the design of products and processes that can improve material and energy efficiencies to minimise environmental impacts to meet the needs of key stakeholders (such as consumers, manufacturers and investors). Depending on the sector, there can be highly technical skills required.

Based on the survey, what are the key skill sets most important to succeeding in this role?

Communication: Negotiation and presentation of work to a range of stakeholders.
Technical skills: Modelling and coding.
Research skills: The ability to obtain research insights with agility and speed to inform project work.

Paul Jenkinson, President of European Young Engineers (EYE) offers some valuable advice for deploying the above skills in the role: “Listen carefully, think proactively and don't cut corners! As a young person in the complex world of engineering, it is easy to go into autopilot mode and not take true accountability for fully understanding a concept. Make sure to take the opportunities to be inquisitive, learn from colleagues and really feel secure about your topic. This approach will help you find the areas for improving sustainability throughout any process.”

Career Case Study

Civil Engineer working in at an engineering consultancy

What does a day in your life look like?

This changes every day. On a given day, I juggle multiple projects but I usually have to focus on one or two and do small tasks for the others as necessary.

I will give you two typical examples. The other day, I started the day by first coordinating with the digital team who were putting together a drawing set for our design. Usually a drawing set for a design will be modelled. We normally keep in contact throughout the process, and then when they are done, I check their drawings in a programme and make comments for them to revise the drawings or model. Many projects now are moving away from producing drawings and only having a digital model. Our projects still generally have both as it depends on what we agree with our clients. While the digital team was helping me with the model, I was working on the design report (we were at the latter stages so the calculations were done already) to capture all the design features.

I also attend meetings throughout the day on various workplace initiatives I am part of. For example, I am part of the Sustainability Champions team, the team that is in charge of our Broader Outcomes strategy for my sub-discipline, and the Infrastructure Symposium Committee (we are putting together an internal conference for our infrastructure discipline ~250 staff in July). I also have other projects going on in the side where I will check in with various team members on progress but if the project is not my particular focus for the day I probably only spend 15 minutes on it to make sure things are going along.

Another example is that for one of my projects for construction, I get ‘requests for information’ notifications which are specific questions about the design. Sometimes clients want to change things, so I will respond by doing appropriate calculations amongst other things to make sure the design still works. Sometimes it even involves me going to a site to have a closer look.

What are the key skills that are needed in your line of work?

Technical skills like using various softwares and understanding first principle calculations.

Communication skills, project management skills and people management skills are also all important.

However, as the technology space changes, upskilling is important, you have to be constantly learning.

Advice for young people looking to enter this field:

To advance these skills, sometimes it is on the job training (particularly with interpersonal skills). I also recommend checking out online courses to understand more techniques and then putting them into practice.

Having a mentor (can be informal or formal) or a trusted senior engineer to guide you is also very important when you are starting out.

To hear some more interview tips, check out SustainaPod’s interview with Dr Elisabeth Marlow, the Vice President of the Institute of Structural Engineering in the UK here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5jCsgYund0LQ0IynhIUX0s?si=3e7b2fe4d4614d11