It’s a known fact the world is changing before our eyes. With the rapid rate at which changes are taking place in the world today, we all have to find ways to stay ahead in this competitive market, and this is especially true in the engineering world.
To run an engineering business smoothly involves a lot of challenges. Listed below are six of the most common and biggest challenges faced by the Engineering Industry and the people working in it:
1. The Climate Change
In the face of current ongoing climatic fluctuations, Engineers are struggling hard to find ways to reduce potential climate crisis caused by pollution emerged from large engineering companies, and recruit more eco-conscious engineers to cut the risk on the environment.
One of the ways to do so is by promoting green engineering to improve sustainability and reduce the carbon footprint in manufacturing.
2. Improve Energy efficiency
Today due to the continuous climatic changes, there is dire need to reduce fossil fuels consumption and work on improving energy efficiency. Challenge here is to find viable alternate sources of energy.
3. Skill and Staff Shortage
Engineers and technicians are among the most in demand jobs in the world. Also,it’s a well-known fact that the engineering industry is struggling against a widespread skill and staff shortage. The need for skilled engineers has never been as pressing as it is today.
1.82 million People with Engineering skills would be needed by engineering companies between 2012 and 2022.
According to Deloitte there will be somewhere between 2 million and 3.5 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2025.
The Royal Academy of Engineering suggests the UK needs more than one million new engineers by 2020 – 250,000 new engineers per year.
4. The lack of Female Engineers
The Engineering sector is trying to tackle the issue of gender imbalance in the industry overall. The lack of female engineers is an issue that’s deep-rooted and stubborn. Female engineer numbers have hardly budged since the early nineties. Boys are far more likely to consider a career in engineering than girls according to an EngineeringUK report.
5. Project Management
In the Engineering space, projects are time, cost and quality sensitive and as a result they are tightly controlled and rigid. Manufacturers or the Company owners that miss deadlines risk losing out on millions of dollars in potential revenue and profit.
Because engineering projects aren’t just about technical issues and rational factors, they are often more heavily influenced by non-technical and emotional factors. The project a skilled engineer might be working on, however, won’t be successful unless there is an equally skilled project manager involved leading and managing the engineering project. Therefore, the industry needs for project management is increasing.
Find Project Consultants here to use their skills that you can put to use to make sure that a project gets maintained within scope, kept on schedule, and controlled within the budget.
6. Technological Advancements
Technology is developing rapidly and Engineers need to meet challenges resulting from the new technological advancements.
Cost-effective technology can revive the Engineering Industry. There are many ways through which manufacturers can leverage the latest advancements in technology to face its challenges head on and continue moving forward with little disruption.
For Eg. Modernisation of the existing machinery and adoption of new technology in the engineering sector is imperative to assure the quality of products and avoid technological obsolescence.
In order to resist the rapidly evolving world around us, we need to have a system in place to adapt with the changes.
Hence, it’s crucial for the future prosperity of the engineering industry that firms remain proactive on the challenges of tomorrow.
