Engineering and government get it together

Communication between policy makers in government and the engineering profession has made significant inroads since the creation of two engineering alliances – Engineering the Future (EtF) and Education for Engineering (E4E), were established in response to the IUSS Committee’s 2009 inquiry.

The Engineering the Future alliance consisting of 37 partners, has meant that there is now a more coordinated approach to government inquiries and has eliminated the potential for multiple responses from different engineering groups. 

The Royal Academy of Engineering is the first point of contact in matters of general cross-disciplinary engineering with specific institutions, such as IChemE, dealing with more specialised issues.

The Education for Engineering (E4E) partnership has contributed to a number of key issues on the education and skills agenda and Engineering the Future has collaborated with the government on a broad range of issues ranging from global water security, nuclear build lessons learnt, and infrastructure and climate change adaptation.

A recent report to the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee Engineering has identified that there still needs to be more chartered engineers employed in key roles within the civil service and that the government must work with the engineering profession to create a strategy to make the most of this relationship.

The report also advises that not only should the government seek academic-based engineering advice e.g. scientific advice on climate change, it is also essential that engineering advice is sought in providing the optimum strategy to mitigate the effects on climate change.

Engineers can predict the consequences of policy decisions, but there still needs to be a shift in government practice to seek the right advice early on in the scoping stage of commission projects.  But through the alliance’s partnership approach, progress is being made to improve the way government can utilise engineering advice and expertise.

For more information on Engineering the Future, download here.