Paul A. Reid, Staff Reporter
Patrick Murray, chairman of Jamaica Institution of Engineers (western chapter).
WESTERN BUREAU:
JAMAICAN ENGINEERS had better start getting familiar with the modern technologies of the trade or face the possibility of losing jobs to foreigners when the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) is fully operational.
Patrick Murray, chairman of the Jamaica Institution of Engineers (JIE) western chapter, is warning that Jamaican engineers, especially those who have been in the profession the longest, must embrace new technologies or they could get left behind.
Murray was delivering the chairman's report at Saturday night's annual dinner of the JIE western chapter held at the Montego River Gardens in Porto Bello, near Montego Bay.
Murray said local engineers "must take full advantage" of the opportunities the CSME offered if they are to move with the times.
CSME
"As engineers, if we don't start meeting and start looking at the changes around us, we are going to be in trouble," he said, adding, "If we sit down in our little department figuring out that our technology is adequate, we might get outbid by someone else in the CSME who can do our work in half the time and, eventually we find ourselves out of a job and not being able to fit into society anymore."
He warned that engineers must not just be "designers of the past, but keep abreast with the technologies that we have right now."
DEVELOP NEW STRATEGIES
Murray stressed that while engineers were involved in designing, "sometimes we need to step away from design and look at the environment itself. We need to meet and to discuss what is going on in the environment and to develop new strategies to deal with the changing environment. I find that some of us are really comfortable with our old methods of designs, our old methods of doing things and it is very difficult for us to get you to even come and discuss new technologies with us.
"This is the challenge that I see coming in the future that we must meet, and we must look at new technologies because the technologies are here," Murray said.
Designing alone is not enough he said, but "engineers figure that design is all that is necessary for their development."
Mr. Murray told the gathering that for the profession to develop, more expositions and technical presentations must be made. "One of the problems with our engineers is that we can be a little lackadaisical in terms of making presentations, and this is why I am trying to encourage them, even at a small level to start presenting technical papers among ourselves, and once we start to do that, then we can grow from strength to strength."
