September 2026
The engineer within
Jonathan Cartledge, Chief Executive Officer, Consult Australia
I’ve just returned from the FIDIC’s Global Infrastructure Conference in New Delhi. One of the people who made me think hardest about the future of engineering was a man who walked away from the profession more than four decades ago.
Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi trained as an electrical engineer before devoting his life to fighting child exploitation. He told the FIDIC audience that he’d left the profession but never abandoned “the engineer within”.
For Consult Australia, being part of FIDIC, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, gives our members a place in the global conversation about the evolving role of the engineer. Australia was an active participant this year, with Consult Australia President Natalie Muir moderating a discussion on nature-positive infrastructure.
One phrase came up again and again in New Delhi: “engineering for uncertainty”. I don’t need to recite the A to Z of uncertainty, from AI to zero-sum geopolitics. We’re living the alphabet right here in Australia.
We understandably talk about engineers as the people needed to design and deliver our homes, energy systems, transport, defence capability and digital infrastructure. Even so, it was staggering to hear the scale of investment involved: up to US$7 trillion each year, FIDIC attendees heard, or north of US$150 trillion over the next 25 years.
We undoubtedly need more engineers. SEEK’s latest employment numbers show engineering job ads grew 12.3% over the year to July – the strongest growth of any industry – while job ads across the economy fell 6%.
But when Kailash Satyarthi spoke about maintaining the “engineer within” he meant specific systems thinking, problem solving and drive to serve a purpose deeper than any technical brief. This is why, I think, the Australian Financial Review’s recent analysis of ASX 100 CEOs educational backgrounds found 23 had studied engineering.
At precisely the moment we need more engineers doing engineering, the qualities that make them valuable are in demand far beyond traditional engineering roles. We’ll be digging into what this means for skills development at the Large Firms Forum next month and at the Engineers with Influence event in Perth on 1 October, run in collaboration with Engineers Australia.
This month we also welcomed 15 participants to Consult Australia’s inaugural Future Leader Program in Brisbane. We want the next generation to be excellent consultants, but this program prepares them for larger leadership roles too.
Following the devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet, Consult Australia partner RedR Australia is seeking support to deploy technical specialists and raise funds to address the humanitarian emergency. I encourage members to back the appeal.
Engineering gives us a powerful way of approaching problems. Purpose determines which problems we choose to solve. And this brings me back to Kailash Satyarthi. He asked hundreds of engineers in New Delhi to think beyond the technical brief. “What are you building?” His answer, in a word: “Humanity.”