Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING AROUND THE WORLDBrazilLuiz Carlos Scavarda do Carmo and CláudioAmaury Dall’AcquaBrazil, the largest country of Latin America has 8.5 millionsquare kilometres of territory (of which 49.3 per cent is coveredby the Amazon rainforest), 190 million inhabitants and aGDP of more than US$1 trillion. It has about 9,000 kilometresof coast and one of the biggest fluvial networks on the planet.It shares borders with every South American country exceptfor Chile and Ecuador. Brazil is now one of the four emergingglobal economic powers (with Russia, India and China).Brazil has a well-developed agricultural industry, is the worlds’second biggest food producer, and its territory is very wellserved with fresh water resources. A robust, complete andsophisticated industry positions Brazil as a major player insome industrial fields, such as automobiles and commercialairplanes, and it is the world leader in deep water oil exploration.About 55 per cent of its annual exports (totalling US$160billion) are manufactured products. Brazil leads ambitiousaerospace and nuclear power development programmes.Additionally, of its total energy matrix of 239.4 tons of oilequivalent, 44.9 per cent is from renewable sources (14.7 percent from hydroelectricity and 30.2 per cent of biomass). Theservice sector is dynamic and technologically up-to-date.The telecommunications network has more than 100 millionmobile phones, and of the 6.7 million homes with computers,4.9 million are linked to the Internet.Brazil suffers from enormous income distribution inequalitiesand lacks severely in its infrastructure. Some 81 per cent ofthe population live in urban centres – located at the south,southeast and northeast regions along the Atlantic Ocean –with a deficit of more than 5.6 million houses. Only 52 percent of Brazil’s urban areas have sewer systems. There are significantinequalities in population distribution and large areasare informally occupied in the centre and north region of thecountry. The railway network is not sufficient and thoughthere are 1.6 million kilometres of road, of which only 12 percent are paved. The extensive coast and great network of bigrivers are still only modestly explored as transport routes. Thisvery broad picture of engineering in Brazil shows us that it is afast-developing country, still under construction and presentingenormous potential, opportunity and challenges. Engineeringin Brazil has already reached a good technical levelwith these advanced industries. However, engineering has notreached the status of being a strategic element of sustainabledevelopment.Engineering as a profession faces a relatively low number ofengineers, estimated at only 550,000 in the economicallyactive population – about 6 engineers per 1,000 people. Brazilhas 1,325 engineering courses with 300,000 engineering students,equivalent to 7.75 per cent of all university students,and graduates 25,000 engineers per year. In 2005, about 30,000engineers graduated, but even this number is three timessmaller than for South Korea, which has a population onequarterof the size of Brazil. Despite the shortage of engineersin the labour market – a market that demands professionalsfor infrastructure construction and industrial and servicesexpansion – there is no observed increase in youth interest forthis most important profession. Indeed, statistics show thatthe number of students is increasing in areas of social studiesbut not in technical studies, meaning that technical professionalsare in extreme demand.In the 1990s, the Brazilian government promoted the openingof the commercial and industrial markets to internationalcompetition, adhering to the wave of globalization. It resultedin an enormous decrease in Brazilian consulting engineeringProjects to change engineering in BrazilThe organizational stakeholders of a process of developmentbased on engineering are the schools of engineering,industry, government and professional societies. Thoughthey share the same final objective, their plans and intermediarytargets diverge. The great challenge in Brazil is todevelop and sustain national programmes and projectsthat bring these stakeholders together to address engineeringeducation, and to develop a new process to delivernew engineers, not only to reduce shortages but to innovateand create an entrepreneurial ecosystem.Appropriate professional competencies must be forgedincluding an interdisciplinary attitude, geographical andcultural mobility, strategic thinking and marketing wisdom,and teamwork and leadership with people from differentwalks of life and from other countries.Two examples of what Brazilian projects are trying toachieve are highlighted below. Both are focused on thecomplexity of engineering-based development, includingthe integration of several stakeholders and the improvementof both higher education and secondary education.Such efforts are important for positioning engineeringwithin the agenda of Brazilian civil society.Project Inova: this initiative of the National Conference ofIndustry has received the full support of all organizationalstakeholders. The project is creating a forum on the doublepurpose of engineering in Brazil, that is, to promote leadershipin industrial innovation and to guarantee sustainabledevelopment. One of the vital aspects of Project Inova isthat it stems from the limitations to strengthening engineeringin Brazil. For example, the number of students enrollingat schools of engineering depends not only on intrinsic talentand interest, but also on the quality of education andmotivation for engineering received in secondary schools.Case Poli 2015: an initiative of the Polytechnic School ofUniversity of São Paulo has established a new mission forstudents that will graduate after 2015: ‘The engineer of thefuture will apply scientific analysis and holistic synthesisto develop sustainable solutions which will integrate thesocial, environmental, cultural and economic systems.’241