An expert panel of senior Indian members is participating in a series of live career development webinars to share their experience and guidance with ICE student members across India.
ICE is urging all of its student members across India to make the most of a newly-available range of online resources and live events specifically aimed at enhancing their knowledge of the enriching profession of civil engineering and how to successfully structure their careers at local, national, and global levels.
In a first of its kind, the ICE International Team is supporting this initiative which was instigated by the ICE Kolkata Local Association to connect with ICE student chapters in different parts of India.
Online initiatives
It is perceived that, despite available online resources and advanced methods of information gathering, graduating students feel some apprehension about the opportunities and prospects of devoting their lives to a career in civil engineering.
While such virtual interaction was absolutely unimaginable a couple of decades back, ICE India would like to offer this opportunity to its ICE student members with the leading civil engineering professionals in the market. Our expectation would be that our graduating members, on the verge of starting their journey into the professional world, would benefit from such interactions and have their queries answered. The selected panel members represent a wide variety of civil engineering domains and come from different companies to give the students an overall perspective.
Inaugural webinar
The inaugural webinar involved about 20 ICE student members from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha and saw the ICE representative for Kolkata, Ayanangshu Dey chairing an expert panel comprising senior ICE members from a range of engineering companies including AECOM, Amec Foster Wheeler, Jacobs, WSP as well as independent consultants.
The event was hosted on Webex by Patrick Courtney, ICE International Membership Recruitment Manager and arranged in collaboration with outgoing ICE Student Chapter President, Purnajit Bhowmik, who had sourced questions from ICE student members in advance. Many of these centred on the impact of and recovery from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, but other relevant topics were also included, e.g. sustainable infrastructure, the impact of AI, new techniques in waste and waste water management enabling energy generation, and how to improve project completion rates and timescales.
The second webinar involved approximately 50 ICE Student members from Jain University in Bengaluru and was arranged with ICE Student Chapter President, Shivom Revankar and Vice President, Dheeren Jain. For this webinar, Ayan and the expert panel were joined by ICE representative for Bengaluru, Smita Sawdadkar and UK-based civil engineer Barnali Ghosh (who was subsequently named as a WES Top 50 Women in Engineering: Sustainability 2020 Winner).
Again, the ICE student members submitted questions in advance, which mostly covered:
- Creating and maintaining strong social media professional identities;
- Opportunities to pursue professional qualification with ICE outside India;
- Support offered by ICE to graduate members and small engineering companies;
- New fields in civil engineering students would benefit from studying;
- Designing college curriculums to ensure students gain both theoretical and practical knowledge; and
- The most important types of software to learn and types of work experience to gain to be ‘industry ready’.
The expert panel generously offered their advice and guidance, and all ICE student members were extremely grateful for the considerable amount of time they spent exploring and discussing the suggested topics.
The intention is that further such career development webinars will continue both with KIIT and Jain and also with the other ICE student chapters around India.
These live career development webinars form part of a series presented specially for international ICE Student Chapters. ICE Student Chapter Presidents are therefore encouraged to contact their local ICE representative to discuss arranging for such a webinar to benefit their student members.
