• Question: where can you see engineering ten years into the future. do you think it will be a more common job?

    Asked by 756eneq43 to Oliver, Lesley, Leah, Hannah, Graeme, Aleks on 5 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by 356eneq43, jojo.
    • Photo: Aleks Sokol

      Aleks Sokol answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      What a great question! I think that in general we are moving towards more automation in many places, which means that someone will have to program and design those automated systems. That could mean that more engineering roles will appear in the next ten years but I think maybe over a time of 50 years you will see that increase to be muuuuch bigger than in the next 10 years.

    • Photo: Graeme Burt

      Graeme Burt answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      More and more jobs will be done by robots or artifical intelligence but engineers will design, build and maintain those robots. Products will be 3D printed and delivered by drones. It looks like we are heading towards global warming and we will need geo-engineering to prevent catastrophe. Electric vehicles are far more challenging than it first appears, how do we generate enough electricity at night when everyone is charging their car, what happens to people that don’t have fixed parking spaces at night, who pays for the charging points in car parks (its free now for 1 or 2 spaces but a large carpark with charging points everywhere would cost millions). How do we store electricity generate by wind power on a clear day with no wind? Nuclear fusion will give almost limitless power but we are still decades off achieving it.

      Engineering will solve all these problems, not sure what everyone else will do for a job.

    • Photo: Lesley Colquhoun

      Lesley Colquhoun answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      Engineering is becoming more and more automated with control systems being introduced into everything to make end user’s life easier. They also help introduce more safety in designs as machines are much quicker at reacting that people are.

      Engineers will always been required because machines will always need to be designed, modified, optimised! but definitely automation is the future.

    • Photo: Hannah Griffin

      Hannah Griffin answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      I think there will be more “meta engineering” i.e. designing systems that then know how to design other systems. This I think is exciting and a very cool challenge to get your head around.

      I hope it will be a more common job because it is both a satisfying job for the engineers and it is what the world needs to tackle big problems like how we better recycle our rubbish and how we address climate change. Scientists will come up with ideas but it will need engineers and technicians to make it happen!

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