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Why Structural Engineering Is Growing 10 Times Faster Than Other Fields

By | Claire Mark

Structural engineering is growing in popularity because it is a field that is constantly changing and evolving. The area of structural engineering is responsible for designing and constructing buildings, bridges, roads, and other structures.

Structural engineers use a variety of techniques to create safe and functional structures. Some of the most common techniques include:

-Structural analysis

-Design of experiments

-Design of structures

-Structural engineering software

-Structural engineering drawings

Structural engineering is growing because it is becoming an increasingly important part of designing and constructing buildings, bridges, and other structures.  Structural engineers work with designers to create plans and specifications for the construction of a structure. In addition, they are often responsible for ensuring that the structure is built correctly and maintains its intended function.

Structural engineers use various methods to analyze a structure and determine the best way to protect it from damage. For example, they may use computer simulations to analyze a structure’s response to forces and stressors or physical models to test how a structure would perform in the real world.

Structural engineering is growing in popularity for a few reasons:

  1. The field is becoming more specialized and focused, allowing professionals to develop a deeper understanding of the underlying principles and how they work in specific situations.
  2. The technology and tools used in structural engineering are becoming more advanced, making it possible to design and construct more efficient and reliable structures.
  3. The field is becoming more accessible, with more people learning about it and gaining the skills necessary to enter it.

As structural engineering continues to grow in popularity, the field will continue to provide professionals with the ability to design and construct more efficient and reliable structures.

Demand for Structural Engineering

According to the report’s findings, structural engineering is more popular than civil engineering. It takes up 25% of the entire salary paid to civil engineers but only 24% of the total wage paid to structural engineers. This finding sheds light on the country’s extent of structural engineering practices.

Despite the popularization of civil engineering, structural engineering firms are witnessing a demand for their services in the country. Some of the firms in this space are STAMOD Solutions, WSP, AMB Engineers, Newgen Projects, and CRBC Engineers. The competitive landscape in this space needs to be more cohesive and requires the firms to be well-defined in client services. This, in turn, entails a lot of efficiencies, as well as an in-depth research before launching a product.

More so, as per a survey conducted by an engineering consultancy firm, engineers around the globe are beginning to prefer structural engineering over their civil engineering counterparts. This stems from structural engineering requiring a lot of fieldwork and analyses, which comes in handy in eventualities or incidents.

Range of infrastructure and public building needs

Structural engineering has a lot going for it. It involves work in the physical sciences, while most other engineering specialties are very technical. The fundamental reason structural engineering is growing much faster than most other engineering fields is that the world faces a range of infrastructure and public building needs. As a result, there are more structures to be engineered than ever.

This is very evident in the United States, where the gap between buildings that need to be engineered versus engineered structures has never been more significant.

According to a recent American Society of Civil Engineers study, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that there is $3.2 trillion in deferred maintenance at buildings and other infrastructure.

Engineers are becoming less reliant on computer modeling as the days of desktop simulations, and static drawings draw to a close. Instead, the days of structural models that can be built using only sticks and boards, when the data can be provided in a spreadsheet, are disappearing. This is because there are so many more areas where engineers need to work in the real world, requiring engineers to be more human and less machine-like.

New technology is needed, and there is a strong demand for engineering services with diverse skill sets. While some students go to graduate school to become structural engineers, others are recruited straight out of school. A staggering 50 percent of structural engineers in the United States are hired from universities outside the United States. This means that there need to be more skilled workers to go around.

There is also an increasing need for more workers in various other engineering fields, including water and transportation.

Every day, one bridge or highway must be designed, built, or repaired, often from scratch. In recent years, there have been several challenges with the infrastructure of the United States, both natural and manufactured. 

Millions of Americans rely on crumbling roads and bridges, and many of the world’s bridges were built before seismic standards were adequately considered. 

Maintaining all of the infrastructure in the United States is not a one-person job, and structural engineering is the most significant contributor to the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) budget. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. needs to invest $3.6 trillion into its infrastructure over the next decade to bring the country up to an acceptable level.

Outsourcing Structural Engineering

While structural engineering is a field that is both expensive and requires a lot of skills and education, it is also a field that is improving as other engineering specialties grow and the knowledge and skills needed to do structural engineering work increase. In addition, as the physical sciences expand, so does the breadth of engineering disciplines.

Many more talented, trained, and ambitious engineers have experienced rapid career advancement in the past decades. More than ever, structural engineering is an exciting field. One of the most common types of structural engineering work is outsourcing structural engineering. Outsourcing structural engineering is when a structural engineer contracts with a third party to provide structural engineering services. This can be an excellent option for clients who want to avoid the headaches and delays of working with a structural engineer in-house.

Conclusion

Colleges are also increasingly introducing structural engineering and related courses to help students learn to build new knowledge and skills. In addition, many new engineering schools, including Cornell Tech and the Illinois Institute of Technology, are educating students to work in a very different world from the one they grew up in.

Here’s hoping that structural engineering continues to be a field that attracts and retains talented and ambitious people with diverse skills and that many countries continue to create a sustainable future for themselves and their citizens.

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