The Hindu Business Line : Now, red carpet welcome for civil engineers

After playing second fiddle to software engineers for long, it is a boom time now for civil engineers as the construction and infrastructure industry is in dire need of civil engineers at various levels.

“There is a huge gap between the requirement and availability of qualified civil engineers for the infrastructure and construction industry. According to a recent study, the current pace of infrastructure growth needs 50,000 civil engineers per annum while only 12,000 new civil engineers are stepping out of colleges,” Mr Anuj Puri, Chairman and Country Head (India), Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj, told Business Line.

Acute shortage

According to Mr Srini, Head (HR), Maytas Infra Ltd, the shortage has become acute in the last two years as the construction activity had gained pace. “The growth in the number of civil engineers is almost constant while the industry needs are growing phenomenally,” he said.

The shortage is so high that companies are substituting roles of graduate engineers with diploma holders and are tying up with engineering institutes for training them as is the case with Maytas which has a tie-up with BITS, Pilani, he added.

There are some new experiments too. “On a pilot-basis, we are examining how non-engineers will be able fit in as engineers. If information technology industry could take non-IT guys, why can’t infrastructure industry?” he quipped.

Although, there is a shortage of manpower from construction labourers to engineers, the lack of supervisory staff can impact the industry in a serious way, said Mr S. Chandrasekhar, Director of International Infrastructure Consultants Private Ltd and Human Resource Panel head at the National Academy of Construction (NAC).

“The shortage will continue as the infrastructure growth in India is over 30 per cent per annum. Setting up of construction technology training institutes and increasing focus on civil engineering in engineering colleges would address the problem in the long term,” he said.

All this would obviously mean higher salaries for the qualified civil engineers. At present, the salary range is between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 25 lakh per annum for project engineers and this would go up further, Mr Srini said.

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