Engineering practice - inputs for course design

This paper presents empirical data from a study of the practice of recently graduated engineers working in Portugal and situates the findings in ongoing work to find an appropriate model to categorize the practice of engineering professionals and to draw out useful conclusions for the design of engineering courses and the competences to be developed in them. Using an online survey structure, we have gathered data on an initial group of 95 recently-graduated engineers in Portugal. The results obtained show a pattern very similar to that previously obtained by Australian researchers in that our survey participants tend to spend the majority of their working week (around 60%) engaged in activities which involve interaction with others (meetings, supervision, writing reports etc) and around 40% is devoted to technical engineering activity. Likewise the average hours worked per week were similar between the two studies. In addition, the data provide useful information on how the respondents gained their current post and show that a relatively small number of our sample population set up their own SME in their first years in the profession. The fact that the results obtained in a Southern European context appear to be similar to those found in the Australian engineering context certainly merit further study and suggest that the Unifying Model proposed there could have broad application. The findings also raise questions for engineering educators regarding the preparation of novice engineers.