Trinity Technologies Corporation

Insight Article
Technology Enabling People

By Joe Morray

The human side of engineering has come to the forefront in the past few years due to the large increase in project work with an associated demand on personnel, the aging of the expert class in engineering which is rapidly headed toward retirement, and the global trends of outsourcing and/or work sharing. The question persists: what role should technology play in these dynamics? Is it people-enhancing or a catalyst for draconian changes in the value and security of our engineering work force?

Our experience has shown that, simply put, it depends. The traditional makeup of a project 20 years ago had a distribution with a few people providing very high-value services and a large number of people providing relatively lower-value drawing and documentation services. Intergraph’s products have substantially changed this equation, and will continue to do so. On project systems, we see a dramatic reduction in the number of people required, with each person leveraging, on average, considerably more content.

For many, the ability to master Intergraph products has led to a substantial improvement in work scope, pay, and self-realization. For those that have not expanded their expertise, the compression is being felt in the outsourcing of their jobs or by having more limited advancement possibilities.

My experience has been that the willingness to take on new skills is not limited purely to the young. Yes, many have professionally grown and matured with the computer, but seasoned engineers bring an understanding of the business that is further expanded because of the computer. Learning has no age limits.

We are gravely concerned by the lack of qualified engineering graduates coming into the industry. We recognize the need to improve the public relations image of the projects industry. I would argue that an equally limiting characteristic is our reluctance to consider and adopt new technologies as they become available. College students routinely gain proficiency in many incredibly “cool” things, from visualization, to simulation, to advanced data management related to the design and construction industries. The envelope of “what could be” continues to expand, but many of our companies need to “prove” that it will work before taking substantive steps. Young people view computer technology as integral to virtually any job function.