Engineering in a Global Context¶
The well being of the world largely depends upon the work of the engineer. There is a great future and unlimited scope for the profession; new works of all kinds are and will be required in every country, and for a young person of imagination and keenness I cannot conceive a more attractive profession. Imagination is necessary as well as scientific knowledge.
—Sir William Halcrow
Note
As we’ll see, sustainability is an essential element of global engineering.
The engineer of the future¶
The 2020 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report Engineering the Sustainable Development Goals stated that
“The engineering profession must embrace a new mission statement - to contribute to the building of a more sustainable, stable and equitable world… Together, we envision a world where all people have access to the services and resources necessary to live healthy, fulfilling lives and live in dignity and at peace, while working to preserve our global environment upon which we all depend. To do so, a new action-based blueprint for global engineering education, life-long education and practice is needed for the engineering profession to contribute to meeting the SDGs by 2030.”
What is global engineering?¶
Global engineering refers to the application of engineering principles and practices on an international scale. It involves addressing complex engineering challenges that transcend national boundaries and require collaboration, innovation, and coordination across multiple countries and cultures.
This may include coordinating with professionals from various disciplines, working with local communities, and navigating the cultural, political, and economic differences that arise in international projects.
For an engineer in the United States, global engineering encompasses activities such as producing a product that might be sold outside of the US; developing a technology to be shared with, or transferred to, other countries; designing a facility to be built outside of the US; working in a multinational project team; or creating a product or process that has direct or indirect implications for other countries.
The skillset of global engineers¶
With the above in mind, we’ll consider the engineer of the future to be a global engineer who, among other things, has…
substantial knowledge of the similarities and differences among engineers and non-engineers from different countries;
an ability to analyze how people’s lives and experiences in other countries may shape or affect what they consider to be at stake in engineering work;
a predisposition to treat co-workers from other countries as people who have both knowledge and value, may be likely to hold different perspectives than they do, and may be likely to bring these different perspectives to bear in processes of problem definition and problem solution;
the ability to define problems collaboratively; and
the will, ability, and skills to work across all political, cultural, and ethnic boundaries.
Factors affecting global engineering¶
Multiple factors impact engineering in a global context, including…
Culture and customs
Economics
Education
Laws
Politics
Engineering standards
Intellectual property (e.g., patents and trademarks)
Exercise: Factors affecting global engineering
Pick three of the factors above and discuss how they might affect the success of global engineering projects.
Exercise: Misconceptions about the state of the world
The Gapminder organization identifies systematic misconceptions about important global trends and proportions and uses reliable data to develop easy to understand teaching materials to rid people of their misconceptions.
In 2017, they created a questionaire to examine people’s global misconceptions, and found that most people in the richest countries are absolutely wrong about the state of the world.
See how you do on this test of global misconceptions.