Worthless Degrees and Jobless Graduates

Srikanth Pillai (name changed) completed his B.Tech (Biotechnology) from Navi Mumbai’s South Indian Education Society (SIES) College of Engineering some years ago. After unsuccessfully looking for an engineering job for over a year, he began preparations for the bank probationary officers’ exam. Today, he is a qualified engineer, but works in a non-technical field, in the Bank of Maharashtra. His parents spent almost ₹4 lakh on the B.Tech course, which they could have saved had he sat for the probationary officers’ exam right after graduating from any college.

Pune-based Chirag Jadhav faced similar problems after passing out of the city’s Parvatibai Genba Moze College of Engineering. He took an education loan of ₹3.2 lakh to complete a BE in Computer Science, but never got a job after the course. “The college had promised campus placements at the time of admission, but it didn’t keep their words. After an eight-month job hunt, I joined a company to offer online tuition,” he says. In 2016, he got a break with grocery e-commerce start-up Raincan to work as a product engineer, where he could utilise his technical skills.

Qualified, but unemployable

But lakhs of engineering graduates in India are not as lucky as Jadhav. According to a 2016 report by job skills credentialing company Aspire Minds, nearly 80 per cent of engineering graduates in India are not employable. Most of them are forced to take up jobs in non-engineering fields or remain unemployed.

Two major factors are responsible for this worrying trend. One, the ease of securing approval from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to set up engineering colleges has led to the mushrooming of institutes, many of which do not have the right faculty or the curriculum to train students. Second, the courses being taught are not in tune with the industry’s requirements, both in product manufacturing and services sectors.

“There is a perennial problem about the quality of (engineering) students,” Nasscom President R Chandrasekhar told BusinessLine. “Over a period of time, the linearity between revenue and headcount growth in the IT sector has disappeared. Apart from global factors like changes in the economies of many countries and protectionism, there has been an increase in the levels of automation, and companies need to respond to these changes and hire accordingly.”

The skill sets required have also changed. IT now requires higher levels of leading-edge skills like cloud analytics, robotics, process automation, and so on, and engineering graduates of the day do not always come qualified.

“Companies not only provide tech inputs, but have to understand the business domain to deliver value. So, a good understanding of the business aspects and having multi-faceted orientation are a must. These factors are further aggravating the mismatch between skill sets being imparted and those that needed by the industry,” Chandrasekhar adds.

His views are echoed by Stephen Sudhakar J, Senior Vice-President–HR & GS, Hyundai India. He says that with rapid changes in the industry and innovation in manufacturing, engineers need to have multi-faceted knowledge: for example, a mechanical engineer must have a good understanding of electrical and electronics disciplines, and vice-versa.

Hit the ground running

“The current, fast-paced market environment needs a higher degree of responsiveness. We expect engineers now to get on the job with minimal training, unlike in the past, when long training periods after joining the company were the norm,” he says.

Most important, there are disruptive changes in business models every five years. “However, the curriculum and practices in institutes have not kept pace, rendering them irrelevant. Not all engineering institutes are making that extra effort to equip the students for modern organisations,” Sudhakar adds.

These requirements can hardly be fulfilled by most of the colleges, which do not even meet the criterion required for approval by the AICTE. After 2010, the AICTE has permitted online submission of forms for securing approval to set up an institute or to increase the student intake or even for courses offered. The website generates a ‘deficiency report’ in case something is not found in order in the application submitted by a prospective institute. However, in most cases, no such report is generated online.

The institute further has to merely attach an affidavit certifying that the information submitted online is true. As a result of this ultra-simple procedure, a plethora of institutes have come up. The number of approved institutes in Maharashtra alone is over 650.

Violation of norms

VE Narawade, Secretary of the Citizen Forum for Sanctity in Educational System, says nearly 80 per cent of the private engineering colleges in Maharashtra are flouting norms in respect of land or infrastructure or faculty. “The AICTE is shying away from taking strict actions against the defaulters,” he claims.

With inadequate faculty and facilities, it is not surprising that the students who pass out of such institutes are ill-equipped to deal with the demands of the job market. Unless the AICTE sets things right, engineering graduates will continue to flood the job market but remain jobless.

Source- www.thehindubusinessline.com

MEP Recruitment Outlook 2017

James Mowat, international manager, Energi People.        

Upcoming mega events like Expo 2020 in Dubai and the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar are expected to be a boon for the construction sector. More contracts will be out to tender as the clock ticks towards these two dates and this will lead to new job opportunities for MEP professionals. Beyond these two showpieces, what happens with oil price (with OPEC having recently agreed to cut production) will continue to play a major role in the outlook of GCC economies.

Supply and demand
The existing supply and demand for the recruitment of MEP engineers during 2016 has mainly been within the region, with few employers looking to recruit externally. Many companies have been forced to run a rather tight ship due to payment problems and a lack of major projects across the market forcing budgets to be squeezed ever more tightly. Employers need candidates who are able to hit the ground running and have knowledge of the local market, regulations, codes and standards. This has been more and more common, especially in the UAE, which now has a huge talent pool of engineers, many of which have been in the region for more than 10 years now.

The next 12 months
After a very tough year for the industry and various regional leaders releasing large numbers of staff due to a large dip in oil prices, the market seems to be moving in the right direction across the UAE and Qatar, with various major projects being awarded in the last six to 12 weeks.

When speaking with a regional MEP director of a top international consultancy about the outlook for 2017, he told Energi People: “The main works over the next year are for Expo 2020 in Dubai. Most projects are under design and will go for construction next year. Other large projects are Dubai World Central airport work and Dubai Creek Harbour, Dubai Hills and Dubai South. Abu Dhabi is ticking over but we can only see Masdar and Yas Island as the main projects.”
As for whether Saudi Arabia will take off again, it all depends on oil prices. Oman and Kuwait also look to be showing signs of stable growth and should continue to grow.

Skills gap
An MEP director for a Dubai-based multidisciplinary consultancy had this to say to Energi People about existing skills gaps in the market. He said: “High quality PH/fire engineers are always a challenge to find and I think highly-skilled BIM coordinators/design managers will be at an increasing premium as more firms understand the challenges of BIM.”
MEP quantity surveyors and design engineers that have stayed purely on the technical side (not gone into operations/business development) are always hard to come by. I can see there being a demand for employers to again look externally in regions such as Europe to attract talent due to the shortage and associated demand when the market really starts picking up again.

Salary expectations
The GCC’s tax free benefits, lifestyle and huge projects will always be a lure to the industry’s top global talent and the table on the left is an indication of the current salaries in the region. More than half of respondents to Construction Week’s 2016 Salary Survey expect to change jobs during the next 12 months. Of the 52% of participants who are looking to move, 83% expect to remain in the GCC region.

Full of Energi
We have established ourselves as regional market leaders in the MEP industry. We constantly support the industry in every way we can in order to ensure we are a long-term partner to every business and more than just another recruitment company.

Our ever growing presence in the region is due to our staff regularly visiting the UAE and Doha to stay in touch with the local market. We want to ensure we only give the most accurate, up-to-date information and advice to candidates and our clients alike.
Energi People has sponsored the MEP Middle East Awards for the past two years and also sponsored CIBSE UAE’s first annual dinner last April in Dubai. Being a preferred recruitment partner, we feel it is absolutely essential for us to be involved in these events in order to stay at the forefront of the industry.

We excel in assisting jobseekers in either establishing themselves within the GCC for their first overseas role, or assisting employees at all levels to advance their career locally within the region.

Source- www.constructionweekonline.com

The world's highest railway bridge

  The Chenab Bridge

                                                  
   The Chenab Bridge is a railway steel and concrete arch bridge under construction between Bakkal and Kauri in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir in India. When finished, the bridge will span the Chenab River at a height of 359 m (1,178 ft) above the river, making it the world's highest rail bridge.

• Deck height (height above river): 359 m (1,178 ft)
• Bridge length: 1,315 m (4,314 ft), including the 650 m (2,130 ft) long viaduct on the northern side
• Arch span: 467 m (1,532 ft)
• Arch length: 480 m (1,570 ft)

Introduction and topography

Chenab Bridge construction

        Konkan Railways has undertaken the mega-project of constructing a new railway line across the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir between the towns of Udhampur near Jammu and Baramulla on the northwestern edge of the Kashmir Valley. This project has been declared a national project in 2002. It is directed by the Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd..
The extraordinary challenge lies in a large number of tunnels (totalling 63 km in length) and bridges (7.5 km) to be implemented in highly rugged and mountainous terrain, with the difficult Himalayan geology. The most difficult part is believed to be the crossing of the deep gorge of the Chenab River, near Salal Hydro Power Dam, by the Chenab Bridge.
Another, smaller, arch bridge proposed in the new railway line was 657 m (2,156 ft) long, 189 m (620 ft) high Anji Khad Bridge between Katra and Reasi over the Raavi river. This proposal has been abandoned by the railways due to the specific geology of the location and a cable-stayed bridge is proposed.

Design

After many deliberations, taking into account aesthetics, economy, and availability of local expertise and construction materials, the Chenab Bridge was designed as a large span single arch steel bridge with approach viaducts on either side. The arch is two-ribbed, fabricated from large steel trusses. The chords of the trusses are sealed steel boxes, internally stiffened and filled with concrete to assist in controlling wind-induced forces on the bridge. Another advantage of concrete filling is that internal painting will not be required.
The number of bearings has been minimized, particularly on the approach viaduct, through the use of continuous construction. This is advantageous, as it reduces the maintenance and inspection efforts, and improves the riding quality. The viaduct piers are of concrete, while the piers near the arch are of steel.
The design of major arch rail bridges requires considerations of a number of additional parameters, such as fatigue, global stability, second order effects, composite action, etc. It also requires that such a bridge is designed to achieve a consistent level of reliability for all load cases, and that the design standards match the construction standards. Indian construction standards such as the Indian Railway Standards (IRS), the Indian Road Congress (IRC) and the Indian Standards (IS) were found inadequate for the large spans of the Chenab Bridge. For example, the Indian Railway Standards (IRS) is primarily intended for simply supported bridges with spans up to 100m (although these have been successfully used for higher spans up to 154m). The spans for the Chenab Bridge greatly exceed this limit, and are continuous. Therefore, to assure a safe design, Indian national standards have been supplemented with International standards such as British Standards (BS), International Union of Railways (UIC) and Euro. Also, many experts throughout the globe, based on their versatile and relevant experience, have been involved in order to make the building project a success.

Following are some of the design considerations taken into account:

• Limit state philosophy of design has been decided to be followed as per BS codes
• Computation of wind load effects as per wind tunnel tests
• Site specific seismic spectra developed by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee
• Provision of Euro code 8 for ductility detailing of very tall and hollow rectangular RCC piers
• Provision of long welded rail (LWR) over the bridges and resulting force calculation as per UIC – 774-3R guidelines
• Blast resistant design has been used
• Design checking for fatigue as per BS codes
• Deformation limits as per comfort criteria of UIC – 776-2R and UIC 776 -3R guidelines
• Redundancy provided in the structures, for lower level of operation during mishaps and against collapse in extreme cases of one pier failure

The Quality aspect has been emphasized, as the quantum of fabrication and welding is colossal. Mostly indigenous material compliant to IS codes has been planned to be used, whereas for the design, international codes have been referred, which means the Quality Control work is still difficult.
 
      

Construction

The Chenab Bridge was originally intended to be completed in December 2009. However, in September 2008 the project was halted due to fears over the bridge's stability and safety.
Work on the bridge restarted in 2010 with the plan to complete it in 2015.
The construction has been contracted to Afcons Infrastructure Limited, a part of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the third-largest construction group in India.
The erection scheme for the bridge is a project in itself. Two pylons (about 130 m and 100 m high) were erected on either side of the river, and two auxiliary self-propelled cable cranes (capacity of 80t each) were used to tow temporary auxiliary ropes across these pylons. The ropes were used to support the partly finished arch parts. After arch completion, the trusses will be added, finally the girder will be constructed as a horizontal sliding type platform.

Real Flying Car Will Be Available for Preorder This Year!

The future is here: The first-ever production-ready flying car is set to be revealed in just over a week.

Slovakia-based engineering firm AeroMobil unveiled its flying-car prototype in 2014, but it was not made commercially available at the time. The company recently announced, however, that its latest model will be available for preorder this year (though there has been no word on pricing yet). This new model has not yet been revealed, but it's set to debut at the Top Marques Monaco, known as the world's most exclusive supercar show, on April 20.

According to AeroMobil, the next-generation vehicle is fully functional as both a four-wheeled car and an aircraft. The flying car is also environmentally conscious because of its hybrid engine, company representatives said.

"AeroMobil aims to make personal transportation vastly more efficient and environmentally friendly by allowing significantly faster door-to-door travel for medium-distance trips and in areas with limited or missing road infrastructure," AeroMobil representatives said in a statement.

The flying car was built "in compliance with the existing regulatory frameworks for both cars and airplanes," which means it is possible that future owners would need both a driver's license and a pilot license to operate the vehicle, The Sun reported.

AeroMobil recently raised $3.2 million (3 million euros) following the successful development and testing of the vehicle's design, TechCrunch reported. The company announced that the new funding will help support the production of the flying car.

"The new investment will enable the company to develop and showcase a physical model," Juraj Vaculík, AeroMobil's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. "It will be very close to the final product that will be used in series production. As a result of this extensive engineering and analysis effort, we have a very clear picture as to how our product will function and are very confident that the vehicle we are showing is deliverable without any more significant changes."

Another flying-car concept was announced earlier this year, when Airbus and Italdesign revealed their "multimodal transportation concept," called Pop.Up. That vehicle is a transforming car that can attach to wheels for driving, connect to propellers for flying or join a train-like transit system.

Source- www.livescience.com

3D-Printed Cheese Is Gooey, Melty and Probably Delicious

Any way you slice it, cheese is considered by many to be a favorite food, whether cut into cubes as a snack, grated over pasta, layered in a sandwich or melted as a topping for pizza.

This beloved dairy treat can transform easily from a solid to a gooey liquid and back to a solid again. So it should come as no surprise that cheese is also a candidate for experiments with food and 3D printers. These projects involve squeezing a gel, paste or semiliquid material through a nozzle to shape it into a solid — and edible — object.

In a recent study, scientists 3D-printed cheese and conducted a series of tests evaluating its texture, resilience and "meltability," to see how this cheese from the future would stack up — on a structural level — against regular processed cheese.

The inspiration for the researchers' investigation was a question posed by a cheese manufacturer, who wondered how cheese might be used as a raw material in kitchens that are likely to be equipped with 3D printers in the not-so-distant future, study co-author Alan Kelly, a professor in the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at University College Cork in Ireland, told Live Science in an email.

Kelly was familiar with 3D printing and had studied cheese and dairy projects for 20 years, but this was the first time he'd thought to bring the two together, he said.

"It was a very speculative question which made me very curious," Kelly said. "We actually started by trying lots of cheese types, but found processed cheese to work best."

Processed cheese is produced using techniques that 3D printing mimics very closely —mixing ingredients and molding them into a new shape. And 3D-printing cheese could provide valuable insight for engineers who are still developing materials for 3D printing, which need to be fluid enough to flow through a nozzle but also capable of settling into "a buildable shape and structure," Kelly explained.

The scientists melted processed cheese at 167 degrees Fahrenheit (75 degrees Celsius) for 12 minutes, and then ran it through a 3D printer using two different extrusion rates — in other words, varying the speeds at which the printer pushed the molten cheese out through the syringe. They compared the 3D-printed results to processed cheese that had been melted and then cooled in a cylinder, and to processed cheese that was unchanged from its original solid state.

Cheese that was 3D printed was 45 percent to 49 percent softer than the untreated processed cheese, the study authors found. They also discovered that 3D-printed cheese was a little darker in color, a bit springier and more fluid when melted, though it melted at approximately the same temperature as untreated cheese, according to the study.

Now that the 3D-printed cheese hurdle has been cleared, Kelly and his colleagues are testing other types of dairy products that can be 3D-printed.

"We are using mixtures of milk proteins at present to build a product, perhaps a high-protein snack, from the basics up, and designing recipes which might work best for [a] 3D printer," Kelly said. "We are pretty early on to generalize about different food systems, but that makes printing really exciting, as there is enormous potential to explore and innovate."

Innovation and exploration aside, what does 3D-printed cheese taste like? Alas, the samples were too small for detailed sensory analysis, so that question remains unanswered until it can be addressed in future studies, Kelly said.

"But we don't expect any changes in taste," he told Live Science.

The findings were published online Feb. 8 in the Journal of Food Engineering.

 Source- www.livescience.com