Necessity of Project Engineering Knowledge in Engineering Curriculum

Normally, engineers graduate from engineering schools and universities as single discipline engineers. After graduation, they will take up a job based on their particular engineering discipline and then progress in their career. Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) projects are very much the norm in the present day engineering contracting industry for capital projects of all types and sizes. In the EPC projects environment all engineering disciplines works together as a team. Every individual discipline has its own role together with the role of exchanging information with other disciplines at the right time. There is no doubt that graduates from engineering schools and colleges have learnt their discipline well. However they have very sketchy knowledge about other discipline design deliverables and will have almost no knowledge about inter dependency of design information. Many universities conduct summer projects where different disciplines students get involved to complete a common task. This effort is indeed appreciable. However if Universities think that by conducting a summer project they have finished their duty towards a multi discipline and practical engineering education then they are incorrect. These days industry requires that students know much more than the regular conventional engineering design studies. Universities guide students with a conventional study method, where value engineering, cost optimization, quality engineering, construction , safety, operability engineering aspects may be given less importance or the university has no means to teach students these subjects.

Students entering into the real world working environment find that design information and drawings for example are in unfamiliar formats. They need help from colleagues and superiors to understand what they feel they should know. They begin their working lives feeling confused, helpless and vulnerable and this is where the struggle begins.

The project engineering study as a subject will close these loopholes in the standard engineering curriculum. Universities, engineering schools and colleges may find this concept new or strange. It is logical and necessary to teach students project engineering to add more value to their career. In the following chapters the subject of project engineering is defined together with examples. Effort has been made to give faculty members and students an impression of what the minimum requirements are for teaching Project Engineering as a subject.