The world of work is rapidly changing, and the skills required tomorrow may be very different to those needed today.

While problem-solving will always be the domain of the civil engineer, advances in technology, such as machine learning and robotics, means that much of the technical grunt work may soon be handed to robots. Where does this leave tomorrow’s engineering graduates and what skills should they be learning to ensure they remain relevant and ready for the job?

Automation is transforming workplaces. As a result, about 70% of young Australians are starting their first job in roles that will either look different or simply won’t exist in the next 10-15 years. The Foundation for Young Australians’ New Work Smarts 2017 report shows that as technical skills are more likely to be automated than human-centred ‘soft’ skills, workers must become better problem solvers and communicators. The study predicts that workers will use soft skills for an average of 12 hours each week by 2030, which represents a 90% increase from what’s required today. Critical thinking will account for 15 hours each week (up 40%). Empathy, persuasion and listening skills will also be used 17% more each week in 2030.

Fortunately for the engineers of tomorrow, these are all skills being taught at leading Australian universities today.

Making a modern engineer

One of the best ways to prepare students for the future world of work is to have them solve real-world problems. At Charles Sturt University, engineering is taught without lectures and exams. The engineering program offers a Master’s level qualification and is studied over a five-anda-half-year period. The first 18 months of study are based at CSU’s custom-built engineering facility in Bathurst. After this, students complete four year-long placements while finishing their study online.

“We start with authentic projects and then we move into actual work,” says Professor Euan Lindsay, Foundation Professor of Engineering at Charles Sturt University.

“If you’re a student and you get something wrong on an assignment, you just lose a few marks. If you’re out working with an organisation or local government and you make a mistake on the design of a roundabout, you have to rip the whole thing out and start again. There are real consequences to the decisions that our engineering students make and it gives their learning a practical context.”

A similar philosophy underpins Swinburne’s Engineering Practice Academy, a simulated workplace with a project-based curriculum co-created with around 50 industry and local government partners. The curriculum is built on four pillars – social impact and engagement, emerging technologies, research and development, and entrepreneurship – and students work on industry projects within each pillar every six weeks.

The aim, says Dr Llewellyn Mann, director of STEM Transformations at Swinburne’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, is to produce graduates with a broad, agile skillset, including strong communication skills and entrepreneurial thinking.

“Within the Engineering Practice Academy, we’re doing a lot research around what we think the future of engineering practice looks like and we recognise that pockets exist now,” Mann says.

“These include a greater focus on engaging with community and using emotional intelligence to really understand the problems people are facing that engineers need to solve.”

Meanwhile, at University of Queensland, civil engineering students studying the four-year Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), have an opportunity to join the faculty’s Icarus Program, which involves working on a range of real-life projects across 13 civil disciplines and inter-disciplinary areas.

Recent projects have ranged from improving Brisbane’s CityCat public transportation mode to gathering data about the fire dangers presented by Christmas trees.

“It’s not part of the formal training,” says Professor Simon Washington, Head of School, Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland.

“It’s basically problem-driven learning that focuses on a real-world problem and it’s extremely practical.

Speaking a new language

A new focus is being placed on engineers’ communication skills. Lindsay says engineering students must learn to consider a wide range of perspectives.

“A challenge new engineers will have is in understanding that not everybody thinks like they do and that being right is not enough,” he says.

“There is such a proliferation of data today and engineers have an increasing ability to gather more information and to understand the world better than ever before, but we’re going to have to then explain this to people who don’t have that technical understanding. Good engineering is about people, and most people aren’t like us, so we have to be able to communicate to them.”

These skills are put to the test at CSU’s annual Community Day, where members of the community, including school children, are invited to visit its engineering facility and ask questions about projects.

“We make it very clear to students that their design will not just have a technical review, but they are also going to have to explain to non-engineers why it’s the right choice.”

Students at CSU also work in teams to help foster collaboration.

“We have teams within our teams and one of the challenges is to use or test the other team’s design,” Lindsay says. “ This allows them to gain experience at being users of a design, just like the general public, so it helps them to build their sense of empathy."

Building business acumen

Mann agrees that empathy and collaboration are vital skills for the engineers of tomorrow.

“For a long time, engineers were trained to operate in silos,” he says.

“They thought they could just do the engineering bit and let other people worry about the business side. I think one of the big things we’re seeing in all engineering practice is the necessity not just for engineers to be able to work with people from other non-engineering disciplines, but they themselves have to learn at least some basics of what those disciplines actually do”.

Business acumen is an important skill for engineers of tomorrow. At UQ, Washington says students are taught about disruptive business models.

“Technical skills will always be required, and I don’t see that changing, but we are seeing a growing need to understand disruption,” he says.

“We have non-traditional companies, such as Google, becoming involved in transport, for example, and presenting very different business models. So we need to be teaching our students about this kind of disruption and the impact it may have on engineering.”

Engineers of tomorrow must be equipped to respond to more complex challenges, such as smart city solutions and complex transport networks. This requires more than technical skills.

“We need much broader, well rounded engineers who can communicate and empathise,” Mann says.

“It’s what employers are looking for, because a lot of the fundamental technical analysis is done by computers these days.”

Do students feel ready for tomorrow?

Many universities are transforming their approach to engineering studies in response to the changing world of work. However, Sloan Trad, a PhD student in the Faculty of Engineering and IT University of Technology Sydney, believes more engineering courses should take a practical approach to learning. “It’s like that famous quote from Benjamin Franklin,” Trad says. “’Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn’. I feel like universities are still caught up in a kind old-school of thought, which is that knowledge is passed on rather than created.”

Scott McKeon, who graduated from civil engineering at UTS this year, believes he has the practical experience needed for the world of work. “I think UTS is very good at preparing students for the workforce, especially through its diploma of engineering practise, where you gain experience working full time in an engineering role,” he says. “It helps to contextualise the things you lean at uni. I think you get more out of the practical stuff than you do out of the theory.”

With information is so readily available via the internet, McKeon believes that lectures and tutorials should be more collaborative. “They should form an entertaining discussion,” he says. “The focus should be on working on really cool projects and there should be a centralised area for research and applying learning in really cool ways. That’s what the future of engineering degrees are working towards.”

Trad says more universities should focus on collaboration rather than competition. “I feel that universities look at who get the highest marks rather than saying, ‘okay, let’s all work together to try and make our world and make our societies and communities a better place to live’. That’s what engineers do in the workplace. They collaborate with other disciplines and they try to work together to try to come up with a solution for society.”

What engineering students are being taught today

The engineering practice of the 21st century is vastly different to what was known before. The next cohort of civil engineers must respond in new ways to solve new challenges created by increases in technology and burgeoning populations. Leading universities are preparing them for the work of the future by giving them real-world, practical problems to solve today. They are also teaching them skills that go beyond technical know-how. These include:

Enterprise skills
Enterprise skills include a combination of competencies such as commercial awareness, creative thinking, time management and problem-solving skills.

Soft skills
These human-centred skills include communication skills to help engineers explain complex problems, and emotional intelligence to promote greater empathy.

Collaboration
Engineers of tomorrow cannot work in silos, and universities are taking a team-based approach to learning. This also helps students to gain greater empathy for the general public that they will be solving problems for in the future.

This story was first published in the November/December edition of inspire magazine. Read the original and more here.