Engineers

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Kelleher, ’s Westford-based chief human capital said the engineering firm plans to hireaboutt 9,000 people in the upcoming 12 months — abougt the same amount it hired in the past year. with more than 40,000 employees isn’t the only one expecting good things for Demand for engineers isgoing up. At the same though, the engineering field is already seeing a shortage of qualified Those factors, combined with the growinvg global nature of the sector, could affecr how future engineering jobs get “Everything I’ve read and the statisticw I’ve seen say we’re seeing a high growth rate withinh construction and civil engineering,” said Craigh Capano, head of the civil, constructiom and environment department at .
“Buft it’s projected that the schools that turn out constructiohn engineers turn outonly 3,000 to 4,000 a while the industry needs to add 9,000, so we’red only meeting half the demande of what’s needed.” The engineering fielrd overall is expected to grow by 11 percent betweeb 2006 and 2016, according to the . More environmental engineers will see employmenf growth of 25percent — a jump that the BLS attribute to the need to comply with environmentak regulations and to develop methodsw of cleaning up existing hazards.
Meanwhile, the number of civikl engineering jobs is expected to increase 18 spurred by general population growth and the need to improvewthe nation’s infrastructure. The BLS predicts more civip engineers will be needed to work on water supply and pollution control systemsz as well as buildings andbuilding complexes. Davisd Bohn, Massachusetts regional managerfor , a 900-person East Coast firm headquarterec in Watertown, said he, too, expects these “There’s an enormous backlog of infrastructured repair work that needs to be taken care of,” he “But we’re also in a constant state of economic We’re always building new office parka and buildings, and that requiresw not just the construction itself but all the surroundinhg infrastructure that goes with it.
” Other factors are at too. Increasing interest in green design, sustainable buildingv and preservation have heightened demand for Capano said. And, sector officials said, these trends are strong enough to weather the currenteconomic doldrums. “There’es still enough work in the next year ortwo out. Contractorsx are continuing to hire, to take on the projectsd that they have onthe books,” Capano said. There’s a flip side to this however. The sector will lose a numbet ofqualified professionals, as baby boomer engineers hit retirementt age, Kelleher said. The generation coming up isn’t as so there are fewer potentiapl engineers to refillthe ranks.
And those youngere workers who are entering the math and science field have more career choices than they had inpast Today’s students can pick from all the traditionalk fields, including civil engineering, as well as a slew of neweer ones, from biotechnical engineering to computerd sciences. “Everything that I’ves researched indicates that in the next five or six years there’ll be a significant shortage,” Kelleher Engineering leaders are trying to counter the trend. Organizations such as the and theMassachusetts Pre-Engineering Program Inc.
sponso events and competitions to attract and encouraged students interested in the Trade organizations, such as the and the are likewis tackling the issue, with the ASCE addressing future work forcw issues at its annual conference in November. Federapl lawmakers also took actionthis summer, enacting the Higher Educationb Reauthorization and College Opportunity Act of 2008, whichn provides up to $10,000 in loan forgiveness for engineering students. There is evidence that the efforts to attract more student s to the field arepaying dividends.
Sara associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and associatee vice provost for faculty advancementat , said she has seen an increase in the number of studentw entering the program there. Therw were 297 upper-level students in the program this past up from185 upper-level students in sprinfg 2001.