Engineering Fact
Engineering is behind everything - from the train you travel in to your mobile phone and the shoes on your feet.
Engineers shape the word we live in, by designing, creating, testing, and improving almost every product or process you can think of!
The deodorant you used this morning? Chemical engineers will have tested out the product in a laboratory. What about your new tablet computer? Electronics engineers have had a hand in making it. The car you travelled in? Automotive engineers have worked in a team to make it happen.
Try and imagine what the future might look like...
- A robot that makes your morning cuppa and records your favourite TV shows
- A trip to Mars
- Jeans which are self-cleaning
Engineers are constantly dreaming up future innovations like these!
Where Do Engineers Work?
Engineering plays a big part in an exciting range of businesses and industries, including space, transport, medicine, technology, food, fashion, construction and much more.
With engineering, you can follow your interests – if sport is your thing, you can work as an engineer improving the performance of new tennis rackets. If you want to make a difference to people’s lives, you can help develop artificial limbs or work in a team to rebuild a community following a natural disaster.
Engineers work in lots of different settings – in offices, laboratories, recording studios, hospitals, underground and at sea. The variety of the job is one of the most exciting things about it.
How Can I Become an Engineer?
If you can see yourself becoming an engineer in the future, there are different pathways you can take to get there – through training on the job or going to university – there is a journey for everyone.
Useful subjects for engineering are maths and science (particularly physics), though chemistry, design & technology, IT, computing and certain other subjects can also help.
Did You Know?
It’s true! Engineering is at the heart of a huge number of industries, including travel, food, health, leisure, manufacturing, fashion and construction.
Whatever you’re into, whether it’s gigabytes, giggles or gigs, there’s bound to be some engineering behind it!
Engineering accounts for just over a quarter of the turnover (the money a company makes from selling its products) of all UK businesses. That's about three times that generated by the retail sector (who sell finished products like clothes, food or books to customers and consumers)!
You can become an engineer by studying maths and science at school (particularly physics, or in some cases, chemistry, depending on what type of engineer you want to be), then taking a vocational route (e.g. an apprenticeship or vocational qualification), or an educational route (e.g. A-Levels or equivalent followed by university).
It’s a great time to be thinking about going into engineering – job prospects are very good; engineering companies are projected to have 2.56 million job openings from 2012-2022. This means we need to double the number of engineering apprentices and double the number of people with engineering qualifications such as engineering degrees, in order to meet the demand for engineers.
From the early inventors to the modern innovators; engineers have been at the heart of some of the world’s most important creations. Where would we be without the World Wide Web, the brain-child of Tim Berners-Lee in 1990? The next time you see an aeroplane, think of the Wright Brothers, whose flying machine made its first successful journey in December 1903.
It’s a common myth that engineers wear overalls and are generally covered in oil!
In fact, managing projects and budgets , using state of the art technology, working in teams, using equipment, visiting construction sites, testing products in controlled environments e.g laboratories and coming up with ideas in design studios and offices, are just some of the many skills that engineers use.
find ways to make people’s living experiences easier and more enjoyable. This could be through technological advancements; using materials in sustainable ways; discovering how to make the most of our natural resources; creating structures to enhance and protect our living environments; designing and improving products and developing a huge range of substances, processes, materials, devices, concepts and much, much more. It all helps us to explore the future.
Engineers come in all shapes and sizes, from many different backgrounds, and their work takes place all over the place.
You'll find engineers on film sets , food, factories, stadiums, stations, on land, at sea and outer space!