Skip to main content Accessibility Help
Open menu
  • Achieving required radical change is “one of the most critical challenges that we face in engineering today”, says Academy President

The National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) has launched a major new consultation to help establish a consensus on the engineering and technology knowledge, skills and behaviours needed in the future, and the systems, cultures and policies required in the UK to deliver these.

Rethinking engineering and technology skills for a world in which both people and planet can thrive: Vision and principles is an initiative of Engineers 2030, an NEPC project, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The project was established to address a decades-old shortfall in appropriately trained engineers and technicians required in the UK and more widely, and to rethink engineering and technology skills for a world in which people and planet can thrive.

The vision and principles paper comprises a view of what engineers and technicians need to be in 2030 and beyond, based on consultations and evidence collected over the last 12 months since Engineers 2030 started. The aim of the paper is to support greater coordination and consensus on what is needed for future engineering knowledge and skills, including the values and behaviours expected from a profession that is central to addressing societal challenges. This will help the profession to communicate more effectively with those responsible for, and capable of, delivering the necessary changes.

For media enquiries please contact Pippa Cox

Pippa Cox
020 7766 0745

The paper paints a compelling picture of what it means to be an engineer or technician in 2030 along with six principles for engineering knowledge, skills and behaviours. Views on these are being sought and can be submitted via a link on Engineers 2030 page on the NEPC website.

In a keynote speech delivered today at a conference about Engineers 2030, Professor Sir Jim McDonald GBE FREng FRSE, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“The engineering profession in the UK has a decades-old skills deficit and diversity challenge and now the demands on engineers are driving the need for engineering itself to be transformed to help reshape modern society. I believe this is one of the most critical challenges that we face in engineering today.

“There is enormous focus, commitment and expertise within education providers, skills and training agencies, industry, academia, Engineering UK, the Engineering Council, and the professional engineering institutions, among others, who I know share our concern about the need to do things differently and frustration that we are not moving the dial fast enough or far enough.

“A new approach is gradually emerging, but it needs to be better defined, more widely agreed, and sharply accelerated. Engineers 2030 serves as a forum for the engineering community and wider groups to look afresh at the essence of what it means to be engineers or technicians in the coming decades and how we attract and train them. The Vision and Principles paper is part of a drive to articulate what we are aiming for so that we can start to work out how to achieve this aim. 

Engineers 2030 set out the case for change in a launch paper, drawn on evidence of the future skills needs of engineers in the 21st century and workshops with a range of stakeholders. Also launched today are a Re-imagined Degree Map, co-created by the Academy with Engineers Without Borders UK, and a Sustainability Toolkit, developed in partnership with the Engineering Professors Council and Siemens, to help academics embed sustainability into their teaching.

Notes for editors

Engineers 2030 is a flagship policy project, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering on behalf the National Engineering Policy Centre, to rethink engineering and technology skills for a world in which both people and planet can thrive. It aims to:

  • determine the foundational knowledge, skills and behaviours needed by engineers and technicians to meet 21st century global challenges;
  • understand the systems, cultures, and policies currently in place in the UK to deliver this;
  • define the principles for how education and skills systems need to change to be effective in developing engineering skills to meet global challenges.

The National Engineering Policy Centre is a unified voice for 43 professional engineering organisations, representing 450,000 engineers, a partnership led by the Royal Academy of Engineering. We give policymakers a single route to advice from across the engineering profession. We inform and respond to policy issues of national importance, for the benefit of society.