ICE’s web team and TTL e-services are now planning the Institution’s new website.  The existing site has many weaknesses, but the most glaring for me has been the limited provision of what is currently known as Web 2.0 technology.  Within MyICE there is some networking functionality, but I suspect most young members, used to Facebook, myspace, flickr and the like use such sites to network with other engineers and create virtual communities with web ware they are familiar with.  Conscious of these developments colleagues in the library world are busy creating ‘personalities’ for their libraries, rather as we did with Thomas Telford last year, concerned that otherwise a whole generation of information users will be ignorant of their services.

Apostles of the Web 2.0 world see it as the information focus of the future, the vehicle for knowledge transfer.  In many ways I agree, but one has to issue words of caution.  Looking at some personal ‘bridge’ sites recently, I was appalled at the number of factual errors they contain – dates, spans, names of engineers.  This is potentially a great opportunity for ICE to exploit.  Creating a platform where Web 2.0 technology can prosper within the traditional learned society peer review environment should provide an authoritative source of information.  Web 2.0 relies on volunteers, just as the ICE has for nearly 200 years.  I hope that our young members embrace the new site when it is launched, and recognise a learned society can provide reliable information in a web 2.0 world.

Mike Chrimes

Attendance at the Materials KTN (www.materialsktn.net) AGM on 24th April 2008 gave some food for thought for careers in engineering.  Hearing some of the presentations relating to materials in outer space and the medical field, one could believe that the imaginations of many young people contemplating their careers could readily be captured.  Hearing about the applications of shape memory alloys in fields as varied as brassiere support, activators for solar panels, seals for aircraft fuel lines, and surgical treatment of aneurisms, I could imagine how Marc Brunel or Robert Stephenson would have relished access to such materials.  In civil engineering an EU Project looking at their use for rock splitting has obvious applications.  Use of SMART materials in avoiding bridge bashing is another area of obvious interest that the KTN is looking into.

EPSRC have just completed a review of the UK’s international standing in the area of materials.  One recommendation is better metrics for the relationship between university research and teaching, and numbers of high quality scientists and engineers in UK industry.  The government’s strategy is to encourage technology transfer via its Knowledge Transfer Networks.  They provide a useful means of linking researchers with innovative companies and ensuring professional development across engineering.  If successful this will address a perceived failing of UK plc over decades.

Mike Chrimes
Head of Digital Transfer, ICE

Olympic contracts will provide a welcome, if limited, boost for order books amid growing concern about the outlook and the fall-out from the credit crunch. Construction companies are experiencing the first business slowdown in more than a decade, after reaping rewards of a commercial property boom and Government spending on schools and hospitals. There are different opinions about the business outlook for the £ 100bn-a-year construction industry, which employs 2.1m people.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is pessimistic and says the prospects for the sector are the worst for a decade. The Construction Confederation is more cautious and is forecasting continued growth although at a more modest rate. Public sector housing and a rebound in repair and maintenance activities are driving the market at present, says the confederation. Any slowdown in public sector investment will be a considerable blow. Civil engineering contractors, on the other hand, are particularly optimistic, reporting a strong increase in workload and employment.

What’s your forecast for the next 12 months? Share it with us.

The last week in March I was contacted by a student looking into the teaching of engineering history at universities. This is a subject that has engaged ICE’s Panel for Historical Engineering Works a great deal in recent years. Although engineering history is supposed to be embedded in the undergraduate curriculum some academics feel it is another burden on an overcrowded timetable. Others use it as a matter of course in their teaching, using examples of built structures to illustrate their teaching, and failures as a warning of problems that can occur.

The history of the great engineering achievements of the past can inspire students embarking on a career in civil engineering. At a more mundane level, and, this is where employers needs are relevant, knowledge of past design and construction techniques are job-relevant for those who have careers involving the maintenance of existing buildings and infrastructure. Knowing how to find out about older structures is an important a skill as finding out about the latest numerical methods for new build. This is often where the ICE Library can help. Its resources are unmatched, with collections of old standards and building regulations, papers on existing structures, and in some cases, drawings and specifications.

How many new graduates feel prepared for the challenge of investigating a 1960s office block or an eighteenth century masonry bridge? It would be interesting to know.

Post a comment and let us know.

More than 40,000 customers and 380 flights will pass through the new T5 Terminal at Heathrow today.

The first aircraft to land, eight minutes early at 4.42am, was BA026 from Hong Kong, captained by Lynn Barton, BA’s first female pilot when she joined the airline in 1987. BA chief executive Willie Walsh said: ‘I’m absolutely delighted. I think it’s great and it’s going to get better. ‘

‘The opening has gone well and to have this working like this is by any standards an achievement. This is a hundred times better than anything else at Heathrow.’

Engineering leaders, including ICE’s Director General, Tom Foulkes, have praised the project as ‘a triumph of modern engineering. With five levels, the size of 10 football pitches, it is the largest freestanding building in Britain…[It] not only demonstrates the vital role that engineering and technology play in supporting our society, but it will also inspire a whole new generation to pursue careers in engineering.’

An outstanding engineering achievement, T5 also represents a major capital investment in UK plc. But what should be the next major infrastructure project on the nation’s wishlist? Let us know, and have your say

I was delighted to get so much correspondence after my last blog. Since then ICE has been drafting evidence to the House of Commons Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee for their ‘Inquiry into Engineering’.

This is looking at engineering education and research, as well as skills shortages. Much has been written and said about skills shortages in civil engineering and construction in the UK in recent years, and a full off in students studying civil engineering and university courses arising. There has been an increase in students recently, but, as comments on this blog reveal, that is no guarantee graduates will stay in the UK. One attraction of civil engineering is clearly the opportunity to travel. Also, as Cambridge and other top universities discovered in the 1980s and 1990s, a good degree in civil engineering was a passport to top jobs in other sectors, notably the financial. There is no guarantee civil engineering graduates from the UK still stay here to meet skills shortages, or indeed stay in civil engineering.

One reason, in the longer term, for this is identified by ICE in State of the Nation and other reports, is the frequently short term investment in infrastructure by the government, leading to a stop-start industry which fails to deliver the prospect of long term challenging work for bright civil engineering professionals.

It will be interesting to read what the Parliamentary Committee concludes.

Mike Chrimes, Head of Knowledge Transfer

Related links

• State of the Nation sets agenda at Commons debate

To the launch of our new ICErecruit site!

We’ve been listening to lots of feedback from job seekers and recruiters alike over the last 6 months, and the result is a radical, new-look site which will go live in the weeks before Easter.

ICErecruit, unlike most other job boards, really does belong to its users, and we hope you’ll log on to this blog to tell us what you think of what we have christened ‘ICErecruit 3.0′.

In the meantime, we thought we’d keep you in touch with progress over the next few weeks, and include a taster of some highlights of the new site, whcih include:

• improved ‘My Jobs’ management for jobseekers
• dynamic RSS feeds to supplement regular job alerts by email
• powerful snapshots of job concentration by region and top employers
• completely revamped recruiter console, with new tools for candidate management and campaign measurement

We’ll be posting frequent updates over the next few weeks, so do come back if if you’ve got some last-minute suggestions for the site.

 ICErecruit.com Editorial

A chance discussion the other day with Mark Whitby and Antony Oliver turned upon where ambitious young engineers might chose to pursue their careers today. The Emirates seemed to be the consensus with a range of exciting projects involving leading engineers and architects from all over the world. There it would be possible to prove oneself with a seemingly endless supply of new projects being announced. This has echoes of the late 1970s when the Middle East was the destination of many UK firms seeking international work. Personally, visits to Spain in the last decade or so suggest that has been a great place to work – the transformation of cities like Valencia and Seville, and today the inauguration of a series of high speed rail lines, are transforming that country.

The idea of the ambitious seeking work overseas is not new. In the late eighteenth century a group of Scottish engineers transformed the Russian iron industry and created a number of structural engineering triumphs which still grace cities like St Petersburg. The railways provided opportunities for engineers like William Lloyd to work in Europe, North and South America. That is not to say ambition cannot be satisfied in the UK.

Many of the post-war generation of engineers were inspired to create a new Britain, exploiting prestressed concrete for the first time, erecting a motorway network, working with a new generation of architects. The dilemma of ‘Do I stay, or do I go?’ is epitomised by the career of Benjamin Baker. He arrived in London c.1859 determined to save enough money to emigrate. Fortunately (Sir) John Fowler recognised his talents, and persuaded him to stay putting him in charge of the construction of the District Line. Twenty years later he was designing the Forth Railway Bridge, the largest in the world – an opportunity that would have been denied him if he had emigrated. Such mentoring is the key to developing the talents of all ambitious engineers.

Mike Chrimes
Head of Digital Transfer
ICE

What do you think? Are UK engineers bound to develop their career by going overseas? Or are there enough opportunities at home for the truly ambitious?