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Mike Fowler
Chemical engineering in one of the most important professions, because chemical engineers are responsible for energy, clean air, safe drinking water and food, drug manufacturing and other consumer products. Chemical engineers possess the right set of knowledge to bring innovations, new solutions, applications and deliver different kinds of projects.
They are needed to help develop a wide range of products, to improve environmental protection, reduce CO2 emissions, reduce waste, improve solutions for more efficient energy use, work on sustainable development of technologies and products, improve services and more...
The Graduate Certificate in Engineering Business is part of the Galante Engineering Business Program. The Galante Engineering Business Program offers a progressive opportunity for engineering students to complement their technical engineering education with business skills. Galante is founded on the values of student engagement and leadership to strengthen interpersonal and professional skills.
The certificate seeks to provide students opportunities to apply the technical aspects of an engineering skill foundation in corporate settings through both academic and programmatic elements. Programmatic elements include workshops, speaker series, site visits, seminars, and other related personal and professional development activities as a connected cohort. These activities equip students to manage projects, lead people, make data-driven and market-based decisions, and advance economically sound initiatives.
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What follows is a recent email conversation between a penultimate-year chemical engineering student and me, on the prospects for graduate chem engers in the current business environment. Reproduced with his kind permission. Warning: Long read!
Stdnt: I read the article you posted regarding Thomas Telford. [Ref the recent demise of the well-regarded UK firm that was a major recruitment channel for experienced chemical engineers].
If you happen to have your heart set on some non-oil, non-energy side of chem eng, i congratulate you. But if you were thinking of hydrocarbons, (I don't have the stats but the subset of chem engers who go into the energy sector is quite high, in Middle East it will be even higher) - then you will graduate next year and face a rough ride.
--- Use it to target those employers who value engineers as being numerate and articulate graduates ... such as (I always used to hear this) .. banking, finance sectors. I came out of Univ of Manchester and plenty of my fellow students simply blew off chem eng and went to work in the City of London.
--- You could target fine chemicals companies, if you solidly want to remain chem eng. This means food, perfumes, pharma ... but the subset of such employers is much smaller than for oil, petrochem, plastics etc
--- Of course, one option is further study. Some chem engers slide into doing a PhD, obviously it's a different kind of life for 3 years but hey you get some major bragging rights afterwards. For me, doing a PhD was never attractive as I was hungering to get out there into the real world, earn whatever income I could, and start pushing my life forward. So in fact, the best further study option i would ask you to consider is - a business qualification of some kind. Again, MBA's done straight out of uni are a waste of time. No 24-year-old has the business maturity to understand half the concepts: you truly get more value out of an MBA if you have been working for 5, 10, 15 years. So for someone like you, I would therefore land on some kind of Masters qualification oriented to business / management.
In my own case, I am looking to return to university to gain a project management qualification. To me this made sense because after seeing what has happened in the oil-gas sector, something needed to be done to diversify. So that's the kind of thinking to adopt: cover your chem eng base by all means, but have one eye on the possibility that you may have to break out of chem eng completely one day.
Sometimes I am a heckuva pessimist but honestly, i commend that you're thinking of things well ahead of time. We are all being forced to accept in a post credit-crisis world and a post-Brexit world, we will have to chop and change jobs throughout our lifetime. So it is OK to have the mindset that chem eng was only the first stepping stone. Hope that makes sense.
Stdnt: I would need an industrial placement to secure a graduate engineering role in an engineering company in this day and age. How would I go about this if there is no recruitment on-going in the industries that I planned to enter at the beginning of my degree?
Me: Unfortunately that means you have hit a dead end. If companies do not have placements available, then there is nothing the student has to make enough of a business case to magically convince them to create those positions. But I understand - you are left with the feeling, "Am I not lowering my chances for the grad job that I want eventually?" Here, I would just say, hang on to the idea that doing placements is good - you just may not get one in industry. Therefore look for other employers providing internships and placements. Two good resources that I myself came across are www.inspiringinterns.com and www.werkabee.com (still at beta stage).
For those of us witnessing a modest recovery right now [summer 2016], let me just point out that every temporary rise in price will only cause over-leveraged US shale drillers to produce more oil, which will act to push up supply and temporarily depress the price yet again. Such see-sawing could continue for years. I am planning my own future with an expectation of another 3-4 years of depressed oil prices.
Me: I voted Remain. As I feared, Leave has now delivered an economic shock. We will now suffer a contraction of everything from manufacturing to chemicals to energy production. Some say the devaluation of the pound will be better for us - it is better, but only for exports, not for imports. We import vast quantities of raw materials and the price in real terms of these imported raw materials / feedstocks will go up for us in the UK. As a result, to get a better profit margin, chemicals and other manufacturing companies will likely decide to outsource their facilities to the eurozone (tariff-free trade) or the Far East (cheaper labour costs per head) resulting in British job losses. Once Scotland breaks away, taking what remains of the oil and offshore wind energy industries with it, they will not just wait around and secure jobs for English grads from south of the border; they have every reason to safeguard their own jobs for Scottish grads. I am really really sorry that the picture is not a good one.
Me: My friend, I would seriously consider it. Finish your engineering degree, no need to panic right now, but just be clear in your mind that you are aligning yourself to OTHER numerate professions. Do some research into how engineers can become accountants (there are conversion courses run by CIMA), how you might go into niche, very niche areas like for example, oil and gas contract law (Reading Uni does an MSc in Oil and Gas Law) - then look for work experience in law firms which are getting huge amounts of work from the massive surge in mergers-&-acquisitions activity in the oil&gas space.
Yes that is one good option. But Proj Management is one of those jobs where your cred comes from actual real life projects executed eg. "He was one of the team that delivered the GBP 200 million football stadium project" ... you get the idea. So you must, must look at getting yourself internships or work experience IN the project management sector.
Stdnt: I was told in 2013 that chemical engineers are in demand in various industries, that the job is basically guaranteed and the pay is really good (60K per year average), hence my concern.
Stdnt: Apologies if this sounds rude but what sort of salaries would I be expecting in the typical industries that I would consider working in O&G/Energy/Petrochem, Water and Pharmaceuticals as a Process/Project Engineer/Manager with experience(Is the six figure salary a myth?.)
The six figure salary MAY come after 25-30 years of experience, and if you work in the UK you will pay 45-50% (the highest top rate) in income tax, so ask yourself if that is even worth waiting 25 years for. From what I used to know, typical starting chem eng salaries for grads are now at something like 28 - 30K per annum (when i started 16 years ago they were 22 - 24K). Again there is some variation in the market, a typical BP-type oil company will pay top end of that range, a smaller manufacturing operation in say Rotheram will pay much less. The talk of fancy salaries is not totally a lie, but I would call it irresponsible to lure people into an industry with this kind of hogwash.
In the oil industry, during the boom oil price years of 2000-2015, you could become what is called an 'agency' or 'contractor' chem enger i.e. you work for yourself, and hire out your services to design companies. As a result these guys used to be able to go into interviews and command salaries 1.5 times my salary as a humble staff member. I was amazed the first time I heard it. If it's so easy why doesn't everyone do it, i hear you ask? Because when the downturn came, the contractors got the chop first. So a contractor's life is precarious: earning 70K-80K per year when the going is good, long periods of complete unemployment when the going gets tough.
Yesterday I suddenly thought, this conversation could easily be published as a blogpost. Would it be alright with you if I wrote the article, submitted it to you first for your approval and then published it on my LinkedIn?
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