Engineering & building management - an overview

• Introduction
• Destinations
• Types of work
• Graduate salaries
• Contacts and resources

View destinations of specific subjects:

This section covers four degree subjects which are closely linked, and graduates from these disciplines often work together professionally.

Both the Engineering Council and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) have consistently expressed concerns about skills shortages in engineering and construction, which impacts on employers but also the wider economy too, as lower productivity leads to losses on domestic market share as well as international trade. Both sectors seek to attract more entrants, particularly women. The Engineering Council website lists 11 organisations supporting women into engineering, science and technology and the CITB recently launched a “Positive Image” recruitment drive to attract graduates into this “exciting and challenging career”. Although 17,566 students were accepted on to engineering and technology courses at the start of the 2002-2003 academic year, a rise of 13.7% from the previous year, this is still 17.5% lower than the figure ten years ago. The situation regarding applications does not look set to improve in the near future either with the shift in A-level subject choice away from mathematics and science towards psychology and media studies. However, the arrival of foundation year study (aimed at students with good mathematics and science GCSEs but without A-levels) in these subjects may counter this worrying trend.

Table 1 shows the first destinations of engineering and building management graduates in 1999 and 2002. Employment rates six months after graduation for engineering and building management graduates are consistently well above average - in 2002, 70.7% were in employment compared with the average of 66.9% for all subjects, although this is slightly less than the 1999 figure of 75.1%. Further study or training was entered by 14.3% of engineering and building management graduates in 2002 which was less than the overall average for first degrees of 18.7%. This is an indicator that graduates from these highly vocational subject areas may not need additional postgraduate qualifications to land their first job, unlike their peers studying more general degrees. Just over 8% of engineering and building management graduates from 2002 were recorded as unemployed compared with the national average of 6.9%.

Civil engineering leads the field in destinations with a high employment rate at 78.6% and low unemployment rate of 4.4%. This is clear evidence of the continuing strength of the construction industry. In comparison, electrical and electronic engineering graduates fared less well in 2002 with 66% recorded as employed and 13.6% as unemployed. This high figure for unemployment is a sign of the continued recession experienced in the IT, software and telecommunications industries.

However, according to The AGR Graduate Recruitment Survey 2003: Summer Review, from the Association of Graduate Recruiters, although vacancies for IT continued to fall in 2003, vacancies for electrical and electronic engineering rose by 7.4%, which may lead to reports of better prospects in this sector soon. For these subjects, as with all disciplines in this section, graduates are subject to changes in the economy. Despite this, the overall destination information for these highly vocational subjects still shows high numbers of graduates going straight into employment in comparison with peers, even in times of economic downturn.

Motor manufacturers have joined IT hardware and software companies in showing some of the lowest numbers of graduate vacancies in the AGR report. This is perhaps reflected in the increased unemployment figure for mechanical engineering graduates from 6.6% in 2001 to 9.9% in 2002. Conversely, a sharp rise in graduate vacancies within construction companies in 2003 is echoed by the fall in the unemployment rate for building graduates to 4.5% from 5.5%, although this figure is still high compared to the unemployment rate of 3.6% in 1999. The AGR report has also found a 24.7% rise in general management vacancies. This suggests a labour market trend towards more project management and leadership roles, the need for which is borne out by a 2003 Engineering Council survey.

The types of work that engineering and building management graduates go into is clustered around the career areas that are directly related to their degree subjects. However, a significant number go into a range of other careers, including business. The Digest of Engineering statistics 2002 reports that engineers as a whole are employed in a wide range of industries: 38% in manufacturing, 8.5% in construction and 54% spread through other sectors, ie, finance and business, transport and logistics, electricity and gas and water supply. Taking the type of work information for electrical and electronic engineering graduates for example, the occupations entered are diverse, which could be attributed to both labour market necessity and the value that is placed on their skills by many different employers.

Figure 1 shows average salaries for engineering graduates advertised in Prospects Today. The figures show that salaries for engineering graduates are buoyant and well above the average of £17,828 for all subjects. In addition, according to Moving On, graduates from these kinds of vocational courses have higher earnings than those from non-vocational courses three years after graduation. The Digest of Engineering Statistics 2002, also shows that certain sectors, eg telecommunications, IT, chemical and electrical engineering, may attract higher wages in the longer term.

Websites

Resources on this site

• Options with your subjects
• Explore types of jobs - occupations especially relevant to engineering and building management graduates can be found under engineering, manufacturing and processing, physical resources and the environment, and property and construction.
• Industry insights - providing sector briefings for construction, manufacturing and oil, gas and petroleum.

General links

• Row erupts over ‘easier’ subjects claim, Angela Harrison, BBC News, 14 August 2003.
• Association of Building Engineers (ABE)
• Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE)
• Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE)
• Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)
• ConstructionSkills
• Engineering Council UK (ECUK)
• Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)
• Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
• Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE)

Publications

Graduate Prospects publications

Graduate Prospects and AGCAS publications should be available in your university careers service. You can also order publications from us.

• Prospects Today, Graduate Prospects, weekly
• Moving On: Graduate careers three years after graduation, DFEE-CSU (now Graduate Prospects)-AGCAS-IER, 1999.

Others

• Facts about the engineering profession, The Engineering Council (UK), June 2003.
• The AGR Graduate Recruitment Survey 2003: Summer Review, conducted for the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) by High Fliers Research, July 2003.
• Professional Engineers’ Needs for Managerial Skills and Expertise, The Engineering Council (UK), May 2003.
• Digest of Engineering Statistics 2002, The Engineering Council (UK) and Engineering UK