A new concept in engineering education: project engineering

Updated on: Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Flawless project execution, saving time and costs, timely completion and creating a fully integrated team for efficient implementation are key to engineering success. Being aware of and, understanding the concept of project engineering (PE) will greatly help engineering students achieve success in career, says Subhendhu Moulik, associate project manager, Kellogg Brown & Root, UK.

Conventionally, engineering students enter the industry with a very sketchy knowledge of other engineering disciplines, which neither add much value to the students' career nor does help much to do any work in a real professional life in a multi-discipline work environment, he says. “In a multi-disciplinary work environment, integration of different engineering disciplines is very important. In short, engineering, integration and knowledge, together with cost consciousness is project engineering. It is project engineering (not project management) which adds immediate value to the engineering students' career path,” he explains.

Mr. Moulik is pioneering the concept of PE and has created content for curriculum to be integrated and taught in engineering colleges across the world. The curriculum he has put together is most suitable for final-year engineering students who have sufficient maturity and awareness of other disciplines. “Engineering graduates need to have the basic knowledge of deliverables of other disciplines and to be aware of their interdependency,” he says. Elaborating, Mr. Moulik said the main aspects of PE are safety in design, quality in design, value engineering, cost optimisation and operability/maintainability.

A mechanical engineer, Mr. Moulik was recently in Chennai to introduce the concept of PE to the students of IIT- Madras. Another reason why PE is important, as pointed out by Mr. Moulik is that in every project about one to two per cent of project value is spent additionally due to re-work in engineering, procurement or construction. This re-work basically originates from lack of understanding of project engineering knowledge. Considering worldwide projects, altogether annual project revenue loss will run to many hundreds of dollars.

PE is a practical aspect of theoretical engineering design study. “There is no systematic approach yet to teach PE in engineering education anywhere in the world. I would like to initiate introduction of project engineering as a subject in the engineering curriculum,” Mr. Moulik says.

PE is applicable when any design needs multidiscipline engineering input and confirmation. PE knowledge will ensure that each discipline fulfils the other discipline's requirements and achieves the final end product, he says.

A new concept in engineering education: project engineering

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