When you think engineer you generally think about the gas and heating guys that come to your house to fix your boilers, but we are soo much more than that!

Why is engineering important?

Our lives are touch and affected by engineers every single second of every day. Take your phone for instance; each part of the phone has been carefully engineered, each app has been programmed and engineered to run smoothly and in a particular way, the music on these apps has been engineered to give it a clean sound, the power you draw to charge your phone has come from a power station which has been designed and engineered by multiple different disciplines of engineering. The list goes on.

Engineering is everywhere you look! And once you see it, you can truly see the diversity this field it has to offer.

What do they do?

If you Googled “what do engineers do”, you would get an old text book definition that says: “Engineers apply the principles of science and mathematics to develop economical solutions to technical problems.” While it may be true, this definition is boring and frankly needs a bit rejuvenating because this barely scratches the surface of what we can do.

Maybe it should be something along the lines of: “Engineers use science and mathematics to understand the natural world and use those principles to invent, design, and build things to solve problems and achieve practical goals.” Although, I feel like this doesn’t even incorporate the magnitude of feats engineering can do.

Either way, what an engineer does can depend on the kind of engineer that person is. The fundamental branches of engineering (mechanical, civil, chemical, and electrical) can be further divided into sub-branches and sub-categories, leaving you with literally thousands upon thousands of possibilities. For instance:

Mechanical Engineering: Aeronautical Engineer, Automotive Engineer, Aerospace Engineer, Production Manager, Patent Attorney, Mechanical Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Test and Development Engineer…

Civil Engineering: Structural Engineer, Site Engineer, Geotechnical Engineer, Building Physicist, Water Engineer, Quantity Surveyor…

Chemical Engineering: Chemical Engineer, Energy Engineer, Product Development Scientist, Production Manager, Quality Manager…

Electronic & Electrical Engineering: Broadcast Engineer, IT Consultant, Network Engineer, Systems Developer, Software Engineer…

A lot of these roles can also be spread across multiple disciplines and a huge amount of them have yet to be determined as they currently don’t exist. However, if you want to see what engineering really looks like as well as learn more about the role it plays then check out “This is Engineering“. A brilliant website designed to spread the word of the fascinating roles and opportunities engineering has to offer.

Either way, the one thing that is for certain when it comes to engineering. Is that ALL Engineers change/affect the world one way or another, and have the ability to make anything possible.

Ask yourself this

Why is it that when you Google the word “Engineer” and click onto Images, roughly 90% of them would be of somebody wearing a hard hat! Why? …

Engineers are so much more than that!

And how can a field which is so diverse lack a diverse workforce and culture? In the UK alone only 12.4% of the engineers are women.

We need to get rid of the stereo types!

We need to highlight the captivating world of engineering, otherwise you are continuing a bias towards what engineers are, what they can do and how they effect our lives.

As engineers, we are in a position to change the world – not just study it.”
Henry Petroski