New twist in “blending” engineers’ careers

By Ellen Fussell Policastro

Whether you’re in the chemical, electronic, manufacturing, or other engineering realms, you could see new horizons open up for your career in the next few years. The U.S. employed 1.45 million engineers in 2004, and by 2014 that figure could increase to 1.64 million, said a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Bureau of Labor Statistics study. 

The healthiest growth will be in the professional, scientific, and technical services, the second largest engineer employer. In fact, employment growth should be fastest for biomedical engineers (30.7%) and environmental engineers (30.0%). Civil and industrial engineers will see healthy employment growth as well, with increases of 16.5% and 16% respectively. Mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineers will grow moderately. Manufacturing engineer employment should grow by only 4.4%. The mining and petroleum industries should see decreases in employment.

Biomedical engineers

Biomedical engineers develop devices and procedures that solve medical and health-related problems by combining their knowledge of biology and medicine with engineering principles and practices. Pharmaceutical manufacturing and related industries could see a boost in the demand for biomedical engineers because of the demand for more sophisticated medical equipment and procedures as well as an increased concern for cost effectiveness.

The significance of this profession’s evolution to the manufacturing environment all ties back to a convergence with and interdependence between the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, said Dan Matlis, president of Axendia in Yardley, Penn. (See June InTech article, “Chemicals to Cell Cultures.”) The term “biomedical” is sometimes generic, he said, but based on the definition from the U.S. Department of Labor, it covers every engineering role in the pharmaceutical industry. The DOL site said engineers in the biomedical realm need a background in other engineering specialties, such as mechanical or electronics engineering, in addition to specialized biomedical training.

While the good news is “the government is saying the need for our types of skills will be higher,” Matlis said, he offers one cautionary word of advice: “We need to broaden our knowledge base in order to fit into this evolving life sciences market. If you’re a chemical engineer, and you’re used to blending, you need to grow your skills to understand the overall process and how these generic therapies fit into your core competencies and education, and most definitely enhance that level of education to fit.”

 “In the pharmaceutical industry, it used to be you were hired in a particular department, and that’s where you spent most of your career,” he said. “But now we’re seeing companies are hiring new employees and giving them rotations, allowing them to experience different parts of the business. If they’re at a company with specialties in pharmaceutical, medical devices, biotechnology, and diagnostics, it really gives them a good foundation to be able to leverage and look outside the box. It’s a very repetitive cycle.”

From an educational standpoint, Matlis said he sees the trend leaning toward a much tighter alignment between academia and industry. Universities are developing programs to address particular needs of a specific industry at the undergraduate and even graduate level, he said. “I’m also seeing continuing education courses coming out where instructors tend to be industry people teaching in an academic environment. They have a wide variety of degrees, ranging from chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineering, he said. “So it’s more of a cooperative approach with education, academia, and industry. My sense is there will be more concentration [in degree curriculums]. You’ll still graduate with a Bachelor of Science in engineering, but within that there will be more detailed concentrations.”

Chemical engineers

Again, the pharmaceutical industry is your best bet when seeking employment in the chemical manufacturing industry, the study said. Although overall employment in the chemical manufacturing industry is expected to decline, chemical companies will continue to research and develop new chemicals and more efficient processes to increase output of existing chemicals. Service industries such as scientific research and development services, particularly in energy and the developing fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology, should see the most growth for chemical engineers.

Environmental engineers

The environmental industry will require more environmental engineers to comply with environmental regulations and develop methods of cleaning up existing hazards, the Bureau of Labor Statistics study said. The emphasis will shift to preventing problems instead of controlling existing ones. Increasing public health concerns will also boost demand. While economic conditions might not affect environmental engineers as much as others, a downturn could reduce environmental protection, reducing environmental engineers’ job opportunities.

Right now though, environmental job roles are evolving mostly because the government is requiring emissions control vendors to engineer, design, and construct a lot of technologies for the power industry, refineries, and auto diesel engines to meet more stringent standards, said Chad Whiteman, deputy director at Institute of Clean Air Companies (ICAC) in Washington, D.C.

Some of the chemical engineers are actually process engineers who design a chemical process for, say, a scrubber system, which will take the exhaust gas coming out of the boiler or the turbine and run it through a treatment process, Whiteman said. There’s a wet treatment process, typically limestone or alkaline materials mixed with water, which sprays the gases coming off the boiler. So they have to design the size of the equipment to handle the amount of gas coming out. “There’s also the concentration of the pollutants they’re trying to control,” he said. “It’s all dependent on the type and size of the equipment. Structural engineers are basically civil engineers who design the structural steel to support these new technologies.”

Another reason for employment demand in the air pollution control industry is an aging workforce, similar to the power industry, Whiteman said. “Because of this, there’s a lot of experience in the industry from people who will be retiring in the next five years. They’re hurting for new people to step up and start taking the reins over for these folks who’ve been in the industry for 25 years.”

On the education side, few universities actually provide a true environmental engineering degree, Whiteman said, “although you can get an environmental engineering curriculum. At least since the mid 1990s, most come through civil engineering departments. But it may be growing.” People coming into the environmental industry now are either civil or chemical engineers, he said. Although some are electrical and manufacturing engineers who deal with electrical processes and controls. 

Source: U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://stats.bls.gov)

About the Author

Ellen Fussell Policastro is the assistant editor at InTech. Her e-mail is efussellpolicastro@isa.org.